Hey Blog! It’s the last post of 2022, and my, it has been a year! Everything seems to have been confuzeled after the pandemic, and with a war, a climate crisis, economic turmoil and political hell, we have some big problems. However, there have also been sparks of joy, providing a relief from the darkness.
Last New Year’s Day I found a wooden box sitting by the side of the road. I had been wanting a large wooden box to put what mum calls junk (reference to About Me and My Shed) into, and this did the trick! I decided I would refurbish it over the course of the year. This involved sanding it down and varnishing it. I started off hand-sanding, and I believe the term for this is “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME” – it is long, boring, and tiring. So eventually I borrowed Dad’s power-sander and used that. This only happened in November, and then, earlier this month, I decided the time had come for the varnishing. This was only a few days before Sophie came, so I had to tidy it up as I was doing the varnishing in our playroom. However, twice I have varnished it in my shed since then, and am now finished. So the year’s work is completed – in exactly one year!
One of my friend’s Mums suggested I write a story about the box. Therefore, I wrote a short set of stories detailing its supposed history. I am going to serialise this, and here is the first part:
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The story of the box
By Kit Bailey
The Sultan’s jewel box
There was, in the Middle East, a certain Sultan who was rich in a great many ways. He had, in plenty, gemstones of many grades and sizes, and he had all the carpenters of the region come before him to show their work so that he might pick out one to do some woodwork. One, he noticed, had a very particular style, and being also a fine carpenter with a good eye, the Sultan chose him to make chests for to store his wealth. This carpenter accordingly made fourteen caskets, all with different sizes, woods and patterns, and at this the Sultan was so delighted that he made the said carpenter Chief Carpenter for all his palace. The chests the new Chief Carpenter had made were used by the Sultan’s treasurer to store his jewels in, and many a year passed with the precious stones safely inside the box.
In time, the Sultan’s son succeeded him, and then his grandson. For fifty years the gems inside the box had not seen the light of day, until some strange circumstances made the original sultan’s grandson open the box.
For all his wealth, there was one thing the new young Sultan did not have, and that was a wife. So when a Caliph of a neighbouring kingdom came for a visit, and brought his beautiful daughter, the Sultan was enraptured, and offered three boxfuls of jewels in return for the daughter’s hand in marriage. The Caliph duly agreed, and on the wedding day the bride and the jewels were exchanged, and the Sultan and Caliph’s daughter were married, and lived happily. However this was only the start of the box’s adventures, one of the lucky, chosen three chests that left the palace for a new life.
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Look out in the coming weeks for the next instalments, but till then…
Happy New Year!