Glass

 

The first time I went to Murano I was a hot and irritating eight year old. I had been trailing around Venice at the tail end of the family crocodile demanding ice-creams and souvenirs but my mother was always very good at saying no. I admire that now.

Murano, however, was where she relented. We trooped down past the colourful canal side houses and cottages to a back street and  a dark shed where a young glass blower created ornaments to order. The furnace glowed scarlet and from the living balls of molten glass emerged a blue swan. Long necked and serene, an inch and a half high, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

We were staying at a campsite near Jesolo, all those years ago, dividing our days between the City of Sore Feet and Bridges and the Jesolo Lido The black and white picture record starts, as ever on camping holidays, with our four tents spread out over the car and trailer to dry. The awning is up and I can just make out my mother crouched over the Primus stove. I expect the kettle is on.

And then there are the pictures of us on the beach. My middle sister and I have cotton smocked swimsuits, mine always rolled down to look more like trunks. My  eldest sister,  seventeen, is wearing a black strapless swimming costume and spends her time on the beach reading. I can still remember the gut-clenching atmosphere when my parents realised she had acquired an admirer. My brother wears his belted school raincoat in every photo on that holiday, and passed his time trying to speak Italian. How hard could it be?  Our father took his place in this beach picture.

The swan was on my bookcase until I left home (five houses later) and it then spent a decade or so wrapped in newspaper in an attache case. It finally emerged, triumphant, to pass the next twenty-five years sailing on a piece of Derbyshire blue john on a mantelpiece in Ashford, only to die at the hands of a remorse-stricken cleaner. That’s glass for you.

Funnily enough, the other day our grandchildren, while rummaging through an old jewellery box,  found a child’s necklace of Venetian glass beads. I was a bit of tomboy in those days so I doubt they have ever been worn. I had forgotten all about them.