Jacqueline P Vincent

Today, Sunday, I wrote a list of small tasks that had been bugging me for ages. I was between writing projects, as I’d finished the first draft of a short story on Friday. On Monday I was due to start the monumental task of editing ‘The Forgotten Legacy’. Therefore, in theory, I had an entire weekend to do as I pleased. Except on Saturday I cleaned the house and washed our clothes, but apart from that, this still left a few hours for me. One entry on my list made me smile at the memory: Hang up the outdoor temperature gauge.

We bought this small but useful object whilst we were living in our old motorhome ‘La Gorda’. We’d been travelling for two months through northern Europe and arrived at a small town which by chance, according to the poster, was holding the largest bookfair in the Netherlands. Interesting we thought, let’s stay and have a wander.

My feeble attempts at translating the poster advertising said event, was way out. Basically, I’d worked out boekenbeurs, book fair, (Hint; There was a drawing of a pile of books smack bang in the middle.) but not rare, antique, or old. There were many stalls piled high with reading matter in several languages. Sadly for us avid readers, no novels, because it was a specialist book fair, with leather bound books, comics and first editions. I didn’t translate ‘first edition’ as the heart-stopping price tags told us all we needed to know.

Ever philosophical, we thought, why don’t we explore this ancient town and have a coffee and, of course, a pastry? This is perhaps our most favourite pastime. In a tiny old fashioned cafe, tucked away down a flower lined alley we sat at a pale green battered metal table and sipped a foamy coffee and sugary pastry. Whilst I sipped I noticed the owner had a table of old kitchenalia for sale. In a basket laid a small painted thermometer. The chipped paint didn’t bother me nor the rusty cage protecting the mercury bulb, to me it was unique and small.

It remained in our motorhome for the rest of our European tour, and then laid in a box for two years, whilst we packed up the remains of our UK life. When we bought our little stone house in Galicia and unpacked, we sat the thermometer on the stone table, in the shade, under the balcony, where it waited to be hung from a nail on the column.

For ten years it balanced on the edge of the table, and today, I found a nail, a hammer and with two taps the nail was in. And in memory of where I bought it, we had a coffee and a sugary pastry, then a ceremonious hanging of my lovely little dutch thermometer, which is now in its final resting place.