Last year during the first lockdown I was thinking of buying some small vases for flowers, all my vases are huge and I usually resort to a jam jar for the few garden flowers I pick or chop off accidentally. On my way back from my daily walk, staring aimlessly at the ground I noticed a lot of broken glass and also some not so broken.

The footpath goes through the old bottle dump and a bit of gentle kicking brought up several suitable flower jars. It’s fascinating what people threw away. I’ve never found any of the wine or beer bottles which fill up my recycling bin but everyone in the town must have been eating paste sandwiches for Sunday tea. Shiphams’ paste jars are everywhere along with Marmite and Bovril, their sturdy, stumpy shape make them almost unbreakable which is handy in our house where vases are always being bounced off of the floor.

So now I can have any number of small flower arrangements, one or two flowers bulked out with grasses and foliage, by the side of the bed on the landing windowsill and out in the kitchen. When not on flower duty they’re perfect for storing DPNs or crochet hooks.