Antiques (of Various Sorts)

I find myself feeling ridiculously pleased with the purchase of a vintage cruet set. Is this proof that I'm now irretrievably getting on a bit? Made from cut glass, the set has salt and pepper pots, a hinged lidded pot for mustard or cranberry sauce perhaps, and a taller but slim decanter for vinegar, and these all sit on an Art Deco silver tray.

I've a fondness for cut glass. I like the way light reacts with it. Stained glass is wonderful to me; I even enjoy the religious ones found in old churches for the effect of light streaming through the colours, though the subject matter leaves me unmoved.

The cruet set will be used, and not simply tucked away in a display cabinet. I'd sooner use it and enjoy it than save it for ever. I don't wish to have cupboards full of vintage china that's "too good to use". It was made to be used and enjoyed - and tomorrow may never come, or if it does then certainly its form may differ from the tomorrows we imagine - so use the good china, wear the new dress, and if it gets wrecked in the process so be it.

My mother has multiple tea sets which are never used in case some unforeseen event of great import might require her to pose with a new tea pot. She has wardrobes crammed with clothes she's never worn, or hardly worn, and which now no longer fit her as she's shrunk with advancing age. What's the point of saving all this stuff? What's the point in any of us having so many clothes anyway? How much stuff do any of us really need?

Mind you, I don't really need a cruet set. Condiments come in their manufacturer's packing, and there's no real need to remove the product from their plastic bottles and decant them into little cut glass bottles. But they do look better that way.