After a lovely telephone conversation with my extremely creative and thoughtful Mum about collections, I realised I hadn’t shared what I think is the most wonderful collection I have ever seen. My Nan’s Salt and Pepper’s. I believe the best collections are started accidentally, and escalate when your back is turned. My Nan always said ‘I don’t even have Salt and Pepper on my food’ yet she had 158 sets. This made the collection ever more fantastic to me. We added to it as a family, buying them when we saw them and giving them as birthday and Christmas presents. For Christmas I made my Mum this poster of all of them together:

My Nan was so generous, had a cracking sense of humour, strong beliefs and principles…and she knew a bargain when she saw it. We loved going to charity shops together as it mixed two of the things my Nan loved to do, shop and get a good bargain in the process. She would always give me the confidence to buy it (whatever it was), and usually, if I’m totally honest, would buy it for me. It wasn’t just limited to charity shops, we had so many chats about the pound shop offers, and would be sent off with a bag of goodies every time we visited.

I think about my Nan every time I see a new Salt and Pepper in the shops and I smile. I resist the temptation to accidentally start my own collection. I have the collecting gene, as does my wonderful Mum and it’s one of my favourites.

I’m going to make a website dedicated to this collection. I think my Nan would have liked people to get to appreciate them.