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The Everlasting Mystery Of Teaspoons

This bad boy was retrieved 2 inches down under turf at Wendover (Bucks) last Thursday : the LHNS 1948 stamp would suggest British Army issue of that date. Maybe from a military picnic - notorious cause of lost cutlery.

Spoon_0927.jpg
 
I don't have a smart phone camera so you'll have to take my word mine is a LH - NS 1942 Broad arrow (not 1948 as my cheap prescription glasses lead me to believe)

LHNS1942_0929.jpg

Safeguarding Reality, one spoon at a time.
 
Yesterday cat2 wandered into the house with the handle of a teaspoon in her mouth. Thing is she has a very flat face so it must have been a devil of a job for her to pick it up. Wasn't prepared to drop it and now of course it's nowhere to be found. Clearly stashed it somewhere just in case.
 
IbisNibs said:
Are they all bent like the one in Bad Bungle's photo? It looks so specialized, as if it's designed to not spill the sugar as you spoon it into your tea.
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That's a special one indeed - designed for the Royal Navy cos the ships to-ing and fro-ing can make you spill your sweetener of choice, so they bent the sides of the spoon up.
 
IbisNibs said:
Are they all bent like the one in Bad Bungle's photo? It looks so specialized, as if it's designed to not spill the sugar as you spoon it into your tea.
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I used to stir my tea with a spatula that had a straight narrow bowl with the sides curved up - designed to poke at lumps and extract powder from small-neck jar without spillage. It had initials carved on it - a thing of beauty - it came into my life and vanished one day (sniff).
The pic of LHNS 1939 spoons on Etsy shows them with round bowls and variously described as 'like salt spoons' (?) or sugar spoons. My one is slightly different or has been mutilated at some point in the last 80 years, I don't know if deliberately as the handle is also bent - but the present shape is more ergonomically efficient at shovelling sugar as IbisNibs points out.

LHNS 1939.jpg

*Edit* Just seen Trev's post - think he's joshing but mystery deepens.
 
PeteS said:
Yesterday cat2 wandered into the house with the handle of a teaspoon in her mouth. Thing is she has a very flat face so it must have been a devil of a job for her to pick it up. Wasn't prepared to drop it and now of course it's nowhere to be found. Clearly stashed it somewhere just in case.
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Hmm. Cats and spoons. The most dangerous of combinations. You be careful, Pete. It must mean something.
 
Trevp666 said:
You have to let the butter get to room temperature first otherwise it just rips the cat.
Plus they always taste much better when they're well buttered.
I prefer a bit of better butter to a bit of bitter butter too.
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Frankly, I'm alarmed to think they let you anywhere near a butter knife. Or a cat, for that matter.
 
CharmerKamelion said:
I wonder if Pete's cat needed that spoon to do the same with her catnip?
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Now you've got me thinking. We have one of those little packs on the wall with different balls of catnip - sends em both a touch gaga. Possible that cat2 wants a bigger "hit" and worked out a way of digging more out. Don't need her more skitzy than she already is.
 
One slightly odd thing I've noticed about working in kitchens .. whether I've got a kitchen porter or it's me that has to do the washing up ....... you drain the sink and there's almost always a single tea spoon left at the bottom. I've no idea why. It's never a butter knife or a fork.
 
I find that too, Swifty. At least 8 times out of ten. And it does always seem to be a teaspoon. I even swill my hand around in the washing up bowl before I tip the water out of the bowl and I think 'nope - no spoon there this time' - and then you tip the water out down the plughole and a spoon clatters out into the sink, or sometimes it sits there in the bottom of the washing up bowl, smiling smugly at me. Nowadays I find it more surprising when there isn't a phantom teaspoon.
 
catseye said:
A couple of years ago I bought (or, to be accurate was bought) a set of teaspoons. Six, basic, ordinary teaspoons to replace the bastards that have crept away over the years. Within moments, I was down to five teaspoons - one thrown out, fell down the back of a cupboard, who knows?
I laboured on with my five teaspoons, until a recent visit from my brother (not a known teaspoon supplier). After he'd left, I found I was back to six teaspoons. And no, he didn't see fit to buy me a spoon, nor did he leave one of his own spoons (I don't even think he does travel with spoons, but who knows?). These spoons match. The missing spoon returns, hooray!

As of today, I have seven teaspoons. I just went to the teaspoon pot, where they live on my window ledge, and another one has arrived. Again, it matches the rest, is clean and unstained, and nobody except me has been in the house for weeks. Either the dogs are secret teaspoon smugglers, or the buggers are breeding.
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Thank you for that. :hahazebs: I have lots of teaspon sets with missing spoons, as well as several sets of measuring cups with missing cups. Somehow with 3 or 4 sets of each I have a complete set, though they don't match.
 
This thread reminds me of when my mother was on a jury for a guy accused of being a drug dealer. The only proof the police had was a burned teaspoon found in the yard where the kids played and a scale and aluminum foil found in the kitchen. The guy they arrested was home babysitting his kids and his sisters kids, all under the age of 7 when the police burst in (swat team was involved), held the kids at gun point and found the man with his hand down the toilet. They claimed he was trying to flush drugs but when the plumber came ther were not drugs. It could have been a toy stuck in the toilet, there was a 2 year old in the house.

My mother and all but one juror were furious with the police because they endangered the children. They testified that they knew that at 4 his wife would come home and he would leave the house, but they decided 3:00 in the afternoon was when they needed to arrest him. They tore the house apart and found no drugs.

My mother remembered finding a burned spoon in our front yard after my brothers and their friends were playing, they were not using drugs, they were playing with matches and the younger kids had taken the spoon out to dig with and left it.

Everyone has aluminum foil in their kitchen and my mother had an identical kitchen scale in her cupboard. But the cops really wanted that spoon to be their proof. The jury found the guy innocent, how could they not. They did have one man who wanted to convict him but the rest of the jurors talked him into voting their way, though he was upset, he agreed there were too many doubts and the police's actions seemed dishonorable concerning the children because they knew the children were there and did not bring anyone from protective services with them.
 
CharmerKamelion said:
I find that too, Swifty. At least 8 times out of ten. And it does always seem to be a teaspoon. I even swill my hand around in the washing up bowl before I tip the water out of the bowl and I think 'nope - no spoon there this time' - and then you tip the water out down the plughole and a spoon clatters out into the sink, or sometimes it sits there in the bottom of the washing up bowl, smiling smugly at me. Nowadays I find it more surprising when there isn't a phantom teaspoon.
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Ditto a lone sock in the washing machine.
Every time.
 
Floyd1 said:
Ditto a lone sock in the washing machine.
Every time.
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Oh mate. Don't talk to me about SSS. (Sock Separation Syndrome). They are like magnetic poles that repel each other. I pick up a pair of socks, walk downstairs with them in my hand, sit down to put them on - I've only got one in my hand. Go back upstairs and the other one is on the bedroom floor. I suppose the only way to stop it is to 'ball each pair up'. But that doesn't work with the washing machine or tumble dryer issue. Anyway, they're not spoons, so - rant over - back to the spoon problem....
 
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