Thursday 4th September - The Korean Chest

 Yesterday,  or maybe the day before (I lose track of what I did when so easily) I opened the final drawers and the cupboard at the bottom of the Korean Chest.

The drawers;

I've found the playing cards! I remember that the drawers all seemed to have playing cards or sunglasses in them; obviously over the decades the contents were continuosly shuffled and altered.

The two steay cards, bottom left, have the most beautiful atmospheric pictures.  I've always loved the boy on the buffalo. He might become a bookmark as the rest of the pack seems to have disappeared.  The roosters come from Portugal. Anyone who has been to Portugal might remember seeing them everywhere. 

The other set of drawers had a set of marker pens for touching up scratches on wooden furniture. I binned them; surely one shouldn't use marker pens on lovely wooden furniture? 

Finally the central cupboard;

More cards (they look like pictures of sumo wrestlers, producing them at a staid bridge party would have appealed to my mother's wicked sense humour! The red plastic boxes are 'bidding boxes'. I'm not sure how they are used; I think in more serious competitions you have to use the box and cards to announce your bids so that you can't use your tone of voice to add extra clues... I have offered them to a bridge teacher friend for her own classes.

Now the fun begins; I can think about how I want to use the chest in future. 

Family chants and sayings

When I was young, if anyone wanted to offer something round to the others at the table such one of their biscuits, or the last piece of cake, or maybe they couldn't manage all their roast potatoes or something, they would hold it aloft and call "quiz?". The first person to answer "ego" could claim it. I think it is Latin for "who?" and "I".

I'm not sure if that's another from my father’s own childhood. He went away to prep school as a boarder when he was just seven, followed in due course by his brother. I guess Latin would have been in the curriculum straightaway, along with the three Rs, and, of course, plenty of sport!

I taught piano in two local prep schools; both of them timetabled two hours of sport, outside, as well as gym and swimming. I wouldn't be surprised if they still do that nowadays.