Lord Braithwaite of Carmarthen

Lord Braithwaite of Carmarthen

T HE FANCY BLUE

egg cup is going to look entirely out of place among the chipped bowls, the corporate mugs and the wonky salad spinners of the kitchenware shelf.

Let me tell you something

, the egg cup says. I do not belong here, in this … this … jumble sale for peasants. I was important, once.

Sorry, old boy

, I think as I place a price sticker for ￡1 on his bottom.

One pound?!

he demands. One English pound? I am worth hundreds. There were ten of us, my brothers and I

. Matching

c omrades in arms, serving breakfast to great men and their wives. Oh, the eggs I have held. And whom I held them for, let me tell you! Ho ho! Does Lord Braithwaite of Carmarthen mean anything to you?

It doesn’t, sadly. But I decide to rescue him from the misery of his fate. I bring him with me back to the counter and empty our plastic container of paper clips into him. He looks rather grand as a paper-clip holder.

‘Ooh, that looks good,’ Marjie says, coming in from the

back room with her Foxo mug fox dancing in her hand. ‘Very fancy.’

‘I felt sorry for him.’

She blows at the top of her Foxo and the brown liquid ripples. She takes an extraordinarily loud slurp.

‘I was thinking of bringing out some of the summer stock, now it’s May,’ she says as she rounds the counter to sit behind me on the tartan bar stool. ‘Sunglasses, hats, and so on. It’s going to be summer before we know it. ‘We can put the winter coats back into storage? … Eddie?’

‘What? Oh. Yes. Good idea.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s summer. Already. Crikey.’

‘The years fly, don’t they?’ she says with a sigh.

I wonder if they do. Like birds, forever flapping away from us, off to sunnier climes.