On the upside, I found the Kenwood ice cream maker

[kaberett]

On the downside, however, it was purchased in 2002 -- the Woolworths receipt stapled to the distractions advertises the release of The Two Towers -- and is its own standalone device, i.e. very much not the attachment my mother remembers Mama using while she was an undergraduate.

Which -- given the nature of the house -- means there's at least one more ice cream maker somewhere, in addition to today's finds of yet another Kenwood Chef chassis (this one complete with bowl and mixing attachments, hidden behind the stack of disused breadmakers), a coffee grinder, a fourth mincer, and a mysterious thing I know not what.

This is particularly disturbing because I've now gone through as much of the cellar as I'm going to prior to the clearance firm arriving (there is, for example, categorically no way I'm investigating the locked wardrobe that's wedged along a piece of wall behind a wine rack that has been bolted to said wall) and it's... not there. (I was briefly excited by the two potato peelers, previously mentioned, because "a glorified bowl lined with sandpaper and a stirring device similarly coated" has superficial similarities to "a freezable metal bowl and miscellaneous churn", but nope!)

Maybe it's in the freezer that is just getting taken away as-is because No? Maybe it's somewhere under the rafters? Maybe it's in the garage, somewhere, horribile dictu?

Either way, the clearance folk arrive on Thursday morning, and on Thursday morning I will turn into my grandfather: I shall become a wretched little gremlin insisting on poking through every single container they try to remove from the property in the course of the job of work they've been hired to do, in case any of said containers contains something precious.

But then again I did, earlier and at my mother's direction, find on top of the ridiculous wardrobe in the hall, in a nest of dust and spiders and pristine LPs, Papa's commission. And great-grandpa's commission. Signed by the actual respectively relevant kings. Which Papa had sworn blind were Probably In The Attic, and had been keen for us to find, and to be fair the attic would have been A MUCH MORE SENSIBLE PLACE TO PUT THEM but THERE YOU GO, Papa, THERE YOU GO.

Comments

[cesy]

Finding those commissions sounds amazing.

[kaberett]

My mother was delighted! I'm a bit "??? I can see why these were important to the people at the time and I can kind of see why you're excited but personally I really don't... care that much???" so I would be interested to know why you think they're a point of particular interest also!

[cesy]

Because they're a historical legal document signed by a monarch, I think - it feels both a bit archaic and a bit special. Like, at least back then, and to some extent even nowadays, having a commission means you're an officer and that's a Thing, and I imagine they have some fancy crest and maybe a bit of calligraphy and a Seal of Approval or something like that. And a monarch/royal person still feels special to me on some level, despite my varying opinions about the actual ones floating around these days.

I hoped my degree certificate would be like that, and in the end it was printed on cheap paper and didn't feel as special.

I know there's nothing to stop me from buying thick paper from a craft shop and doing calligraphy and heraldry and sealing wax myself, but it has not yet happened. Some day I will make really fancy adulting certificates for my friends.

[rmc28]

Yeah, I kind of get that. Spouse and I got married in a Cambridge College Chapel, and so we had to get a Special Licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which sounds like we're in a period romance but is actually fairly straightforward to obtain. Anyway, it is satisfyingly formal-document with seal and fancy crest and stuff. (And er, in a safe place somewhere in the study? I could not swear to being able to put my hands on it in five minutes, and getting the house to a point where that is more likely is definitely A Goal I Have.)

[fyreharper]

I was quite disappointed at my university diploma being just a printed piece of paper also - having grown up seeing my parents’ hanging on the wall in all their large calligraphed vellum-as-in-sheepskin glory (there’s a story about “and that imperfection there was probably from a bit of barbed wire”)

Though I suppose that would be rather a lot of sheep and people would be displeased about the source.

[fyreharper]

Although it appears Wikipedia is trying to tell me vellum is from calfskin and everything else is parchment. I think.

[davidgillon]

My degree certificate is on decent paper, has a nice printed imitation of calligraphy, and then they typed in or printed my name in Arial. Why!?!