The story of the wooden spoon

This is a story. A story about a wooden spoon. I have had this wooden spoon for almost ten years. We have been through a lot together. There have been ups. There have been downs. But through it all, we have remained together.

When I was little, we used to walk to my Nana’s house every Sunday and she would make us lunch. She always made mince and something. I think it was potatoes and other vegetables. I wasn’t really paying attention. I just loved the mince. Maybe she cooked it especially well. I don’t know. I just know that my brother and I were obsessed with it, couldn’t get enough of it.

When she died, I was on my gap year in Africa and my dad and brother did all the sorting out of her stuff. When I got back from my gap year, I was immediately packing up my life again to move to university and my dad gave me my Nana’s cutlery to take. Amongst it all was a wooden spoon. One of the spoons she probably used when making our Sunday lunches of mince. It was sturdy and served me for almost anything I decided to cook (mostly pasta and sauces, as I was an unimaginative student).

When I left university for the summer and then actually ended up running away back to Africa and then coming back and going to a different university, again the wooden spoon and I found each other and made the journey to London together.

We survived halls of residence in tact and we moved into a flat just over the road from uni (the ‘lazy’ in my name becomes clear now) and lived with one close friend and two strangers. We found them on Facebook. They seemed fab. In fact, one of them disappeared and his room started to smell and his parents had to come and clean it out. And the other was nice but buggered off after a month or so.

I was not there the day she left but she obviously packed in a bit of a hurry. Or she intentionally broke my heart. Whichever it is, I have not forgiven her.

I came home that day and did not notice anything amiss. I hadn’t suspected she had a cruel heart made of stone. A few days later, I wanted to cook. I chopped something, I diced something else, I warmed some oil in a pan, I reached for my wooden spoon…. And it was not there. Panic swept over me. I looked around but it was not there. I realised where it must be but had no idea where it’s new home was.

Coincidentally, a girl I had lived in halls with in my first year at uni came over to say hi one day. She was still living in halls and mentioned that the girl who had moved out of our flat had moved in with one of her boyfriend’s friends, also in halls.

And so, the plan was put in place. They would wait until she had gone out one evening then sneak in, find my Nana’s wooden spoon and sneak back out, returning the wooden spoon to me asap.

And they did battle valiantly. They entered the battlefield, used their skills of stealth and sneakiness and retrieved the wooden spoon! Hoo! Rah!

Since then, I have guarded the wooden spoon carefully, not letting another silly careless mistake happen again. When I moved into a lovely massive converted coach house, it came with me. When I moved out a little while later, I carried in my backpack as I cycled to my new destination.

And now it sits happily in the utensil pot thing with the other utensils. It sometimes feels a little threatened by the presence of two other wooden spoons. Yes, two! But it knows those are but small wooden spoons, not comparable to it’s relative long-handled glory. It is the most useful when making things in a big pot, where the other wooden spoons, short-handled as they are, would fall into the food below.

Here’s to my Nana’s wooden spoon!