The oil lamp left to me by mother. There's a reason she left it to me which I'll briefly explain.
Back in the late 70s, my parents and my 2 brothers went away on holiday for a week or two, leaving me at home alone. I threw a party, without their knowledge or consent (as it wouldn't have been given); in the morning I found the oil lamp shade in multiple pieces.
Back in the late 70s early 80s, there was an advert on ITV for the Yellow Pages (the hard copy version of Google today), where a young bloke has much the same issue as I had but with scratches on a wooden table; he scoured the Yellow Pages and got a furniture restorer in to fix it before his parents got home. I didn't use the Yellow Pages, I contacted a very posh department store in Norwich who I'd seen selling them and they said they could source a replacment of near as damnit the exact same colour. A couple of days later I took a train to Norwich, paid for and collected the replacement shade, brought it home and bob's your uncle, who would know? My parents came home and nothing was said.
Fast forward to 2001 a year before my Mother passed away in 2002 and during a visit to see her with Carole, my Mum took me to one side and said "you need to take the oil lamp when I go, at the end of the day, you bought the shade."
Oh how lovely, that’s a great story! I bet all those years you thought you had got away with it! You can’t fool mums! You were a very enterprising young man though , no wonder you did well in life!
I remember that ad so well too.
Lovely shot for flash of red!