ST201903

LIVING (^) | BELONGINGS
M
y bakestone sits on my hob, the
size of a large dinner plate, heavy
and Bible-black, as Dylan
Thomas would have said. As
black as the coal dust my grandmother
would have washed from the backs of her
husband and sons. Rarely used, but a
reminder of where I have come from.
The g r iddle, or ba kestone, used to be my
mother’s, and her mother’s before her, and
in the house I grew up in, it lived in the
dusty, slightly spidery space between the
wall and the fridge. A clear plastic bag kept it
clean because it can never be washed. This
bag spent my childhood gradually
decomposing, the plastic becoming brittle
and torn, until it hardly served any useful
purpose but, regardless, was still faithfully
wrapped around the bakestone after it had
cooled from making a batch of Welsh cakes
or pikelets for Sunday tea.
The recipes came from an ancient
cookbook Croeso Cymreig, (A Welsh
Welcome), published by the Wales Gas
Board – my edition is from 1959 and cost one
shilling. For some reason I have never made
any of the other recipes, possibly because
I need a bit more precision than they offer –
“a quantity of limpets”, “six-pennyworth of
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cockles” – or am put off by the extraordinary
a mount of la rd ca lled for in t he recipes.
The recipe book ca me to me w it h t he
bakestone. I was visiting my mother one
lovely spring day, and she asked me what of
hers I would like to keep. Laughing with her
for being morbid, I said the bakestone and
took it, and the cookbook, with me. I had no
idea the next time I would see my mum she
would be in hospital, and six weeks after
that I would have lost her.
Like an expensive Swiss watch, I feel that
I don’t own it, it’s not ‘my bakestone’ it is ‘the
bakestone’; I am only its guardian for my
lifetime, as my mother was for hers. When it
is my t ur n to pa ss it on, to wh ichever of my
sons becomes its next guardian, it will hold
its own special memories.
If my house was burning down would it be
the thing that I saved? Yes, except it weighs a
ton! Frankly, like the women who have used
it down the years, it is very strong, and more
than capable of looking after itself, so I may
leave it behind. I suspect that, after the fire,
in the still-smoking embers it would be
found – unscathed! The recipe book though?
That would be safe in my pocket.
The bakestone
by Carolyn Jones
WHAT I TREASURE