Do you remember this Japanese shop? It was one of my favourite places in South Kensington in the eighties. It had beautiful window displays ranging from covetable silk kimonos to beautiful glazed chopsticks to porcelain teasets, (much imitated now by Tiger, I notice.) I used to love going there for various presents, even though it was very expensive, so I concentrated on the little things.

When I got married in 1978 my parents in law had to be wooed a bit, and so this shop became a little Aladdin’s cave. I believe presents should be preferably beautiful and possibly functional and I knew my mother in law always appreciated functional. So napkins fulfilled all criteria. Or so I thought.

Obviously my mother thought so too because the label Krysia is in her handwriting. She must have sent the pack over as a present at some point. Seeing my mother’s handwriting brought a tear to my eye, but my mother in law obviously thought these beautiful rice paper napkins were far too beautiful to use and she kept them safe for over forty years!

When we packed up her flat in Poland we must have found them and boxed them up and brought them back to England. That was a few years ago!

Last week we started opening up the boxes and so I found these napkins They brought back so many memories. Now I have to decide what to do with them. They really are far too pretty to use for greasy lips!