This time of year, I am told, is a good time for marmalade-making. Where you get the oranges from in mid-February with the Coronavirus doing its worst, and everybody who isn’t in quarantine trying to limit their carbon footprint, I have no idea, but don’t let me stop the British army of home marmalade makers from doing their worst (or, preferably, best). My mother-in-law used to make wonderful marmalade, and so, it turns out, did Mrs. Colin Cowdrey.
How do I know this? Well, a strong supporter of the Heritage Trust has a wife who makes marmalade every year, and she, wise and thrifty lady that she is, saves her jars from season to season as the contents gets consumed (her marmalade is excellent, plenty good enough to satisfy even a palate as discerning as Paddington Bear). This year, as she prepared her monster brew, she looked out some previously loved jars from her cupboard, and came across one still bearing a label from 1990 – thirty years ago. The label shows that it was originally made for Kent’s Appeal Year, and on the edge of the label (not visible in the photo, thanks to the incompetence of the photographer – me) it bears the name of the creator of the original pot – Mrs. M.C. Cowdrey.
Penny Cowdrey’s marmalade pot – sadly empty, but probably past its sell by date
I have personal verification from her son Jeremy, who remembers with great relish his mother’s marmalade, more sugar than oranges but delicious all the same. So the pot, its provenance having been proved, goes into the Kent CCC collection of memorabilia, proving that we are not only interested in championship trophies (although another one would be nice) but in any kind of Kent cricket-related item. Mugs we have, a few shirts we have, snuff boxes and cigarette cases, cuff links and silver salvers galore, but it is just as important that we remember and celebrate our heritage through empty jam jars as through the ball that took a hat-trick or the bat that scored a thousand runs.
These little objects, of little or no intrinsic value, nevertheless are valuable additions to our collection and to the way we can tell the story of Kent’s cricketing heritage. Autographs and photographs come into the same category, as do posters and miniature cricket bats signed by the usual suspects and also by most unlikely names (I have one signed by, among others, Jim Capaldi and Dave Mason, members of the Sixties supergroup Traffic: the signature of lead vocalist Steve Winwood is unfortunately missing). As long as there is a link to Kent cricket they may be of interest.
A couple of Kent mugs featuring several Kent mugshots
The point of this brief blog is just to send out the message to all Kent cricket lovers to see what you might have in your attics, your cupboards under the stairs, your garden sheds or on your living room walls that might help us tell the story of Kent cricket, which has always been happy to include pots of marmalade as much as trophies and medals. We would love to see them, especially in this, our 150th anniversary year.