A mug's game

Really, I don't collect mugs. And I don't collect royal memorabilia. But seeing a Diamond Jubilee mug in the local Pot Shop, I couldn't resist adding it to the other two I have. The oldest one, from the 1953 Coronation, saw me through most of my childhood, arriving in my life when I was seven years old and recovering from having my tonsils taken out. On the kitchen table. I don't know why my parents thought this was better than being in hospital, but maybe such things were common in these days. I believe it was one of the last home operations carried out in Glasgow, and I can remember it with disturbing clarity. The stoneware mug on the left, from 1977, was bought, I think, to be one of the slung mugs used in the percussion for Britten's opera Noye's Fludde, which Mr B put on with a cast of thousands in St John's Church, Dunoon, over three nights in June 1977. It is a second, with faulty glaze, and chipped, perhaps from being hit with a mallet - or whatever - during the performance.

So there you are.