The other day my son brought back a bottle he had unearthed during some building work. It must have been in the ground around a hundred years: there’s a thought!

I thought at first that the bottle was clear glass but when it is washed, I see that it is faintly tinted blue: sky blue. The bottle is about 6” high and sort of flat, rather than round. It is perfect, just missing a cork. There is a number in raised letters on the base: 10915 and the letters: WOODWARD CHEMIST NOTTINGHAM cover half the bottle, lengthways, like the spine of a book, but each word has a line to itself and each letter is moulded in handsome capitals with serifs. The colour pools in the base and in the rim of the bottle where the glass is thicker.

I notice how the light sparkles, not just on the surface where the letters stand out, but also from the trapped air bubbles within the glass, which show the bottles age. I pick a bluebell to put in water in the bottle and the blues seem to complement each other perfectly.

Notes:

“I think you should say that you have bluebells growing in your garden and those are the ones you pick.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Oh, alright.”