Our table

A sense of place

In our small cottage, the table sits at the heart of it all.

It serves many purposes: my desk by day, the place where we commune with the clattering of plates and scrape of cutlery by night. On weekend mornings, it is littered with discarded newspapers, books and coffee cups. It is a vessel for ordinary things; a vase of flowers, a tube of my favourite lip balm, a candleholder placed on top of a small silver platter I bought for £1 at the local car boot fair.

Sometimes it feels as though all life happens here, in this very spot, my legs curled beneath me as I tap away at the keyboard, James descending the stairs to make his 3pm cup of tea and snack. Our memories in this cottage are like the knots in the wood, impressed indelibly into the surface; all the meals we have eaten here, the miscellaneous objects abandoned at the end of a long day, the places where our elbows meet the grain.

If objects have a soul (and I very much believe that they do), this one is as solid and dependable a friend as you could ever hope for, its corners soft and round, its surface whorled and imperfect. A sixties baby, our table came to be in an era of making things to last for a lifetime, not just a season.

And now, our story is intertwined with every person who has known and loved this table, who has felt its grooves and found solace and comfort in its familiarity, who has danced around it, spilled on it, bickered across it. It is the heart and hearth of our home, a patient witness to our rituals and domesticity, a trusted confidant when the chips are down and home feels like the safest place to be.

The table is part of us now, and we, it. We are marked into its grain. And as the slow, steady cadence of our days continues on, it will remain steadfast as ever - always there, welcoming us home.

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This post was very much inspired by Bee Wilson’s moving memoir, The Heart-Shaped Tin, which I have just started reading (I know, I am unfashionably late on that one). Thank you, Bee, for your words x