Chipped Enamel

Eh? You say. Well let me tell you a story.

The cottage kitchen in Arran has the loveliest M&S bread bin , biscuit barrel and tea coffee sugar containers; but when I tried to duplicate them a couple of years ago for the kitchen at home, months of searching produced no results and instead I went back to M&S for something different. A dash of red would be adventurous so I bought kettle, toaster,bread bin etc etc etc -- all in red enamelled metal.

Four weeks in, the paint started to fall off the colander. Back to M&S and a replacement. It stayed flake free for a couple of months, but by that time other items were losing paint. And here I take some blame: I had spent a lot of money, and should have bagged all the items up and gone back to complain at M&S. Did I? No; too embarrassing. The items have grown more and more shoddy until I decided to put it down to experience and expense.

The refurb, in brushed steel, is almost complete. The red chipped enamel will be pierced and demoted to the garden as rusting rustic pots!

But look out: M&S is still selling the range, albeit in cream.