Whenever I need to head into town to do anything at all in the Dame Street vicinity of Dublin city centre, I’ll try to arrive a little early. I want to make space to visit one of my favourite places, the Søstrene Grene shop on George’s Street. It’s is one of those stores that sells “bits”. Delightful bits of stationery, homewares, seasonal decorations, craft supplies. The shop is laid out like a maze, and as soon as I am embraced into its bosom I float around on the lazy river of candle holders and paper stars, placing trinkets and fancies into my basket. A pair of pale-blue glitter socks here, a tiny box containing an even tinier set of rubber stamps there. I cannot get enough of the place. But there is nothing, nothing teh store does better than a little bowl.
I dare say there is little of middling consequence in this life that can’t be improved by the introduction of a tiny bowl. I bloody love a tiny bowl. I’m saddened at how long it took me to realise that the reason eating apples always felt like a chore was because I wasn’t slicing them up and putting them into a little bowl. Nothing makes me feel more accomplished than having a tiny pinch pot of salt atop the air fryer. I keep a stash of little bowls in my cupboards, and it makes me happy to know they are there, even if not in use.
Think about when you are in a nice restaurant. They’ll usually bring out a notions butter, spiked with seaweed or roasted chanterelles. The butter will be in a little bowl and will make you feel more special than anything else that day. When abroad in Spain or France and settling in for your 9pm dinner, feeling so continental and va-va-voom, they might place some little bowls of olives or nuts or soupcons of something exotic and you think to yourself, “When I get home, I’m getting myself some little bowls and everything is going to change”.
Tell me you can picture a wee pinch pot no bigger than a dish for a kitten with lemons and leaves glazed on to it, without breaking into a smile. You can’t do it
My friend Eoin has been a tiny bowl advocate for years now. He loves nothing more than a mise en place, chopping and shredding and decanting things from slightly larger containers into increasingly smaller vessels. And isn’t he right? We’ve gently slagged him about it for years, and now the scales have fallen from my eyes and I can see that he was right about the little bowls all along. For instance, I was having a problem keeping track of small things around my home – hairpins, bobbins, earrings, rings. I tried to have one spot to keep them all but invariably I would discard them hither and thither and find myself with not one single clip, despite purchasing thousands of the things over the years. Enter my distribution of little bowls. At least one in every room, but let’s be serious, I have dozens of the things. Now every small and easily lost item goes into the nearest bowl. I’m like a new woman.
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The only thing better than a little bowl is a little bowl with depictions of fruit on it. Tell me you can picture a wee pinch pot no bigger than a dish for a kitten with lemons and leaves glazed on to it, without breaking into a smile. You can’t do it. No more than you can see a tiny pot of marmalade in a hotel breakfast buffet and fail to stop yourself from touching it with glee. Those tiny Nutellas too. I know you’ve giggled at them. Miniature things deliver such a shot of dopamine into our brains, they’re irresistible to us. Which brings me back to my favourite store.
As well as its complement of tiny bowls, any wicker storage basket your heart desires and a truly staggering array of liquorice products (it is a Danish store, after all), there’s usually some little display of miniature items, be they for a doll house, a naughty elf or a fairy garden. It has pained me many times to leave behind a teeny ladder, a wee toolbox, a little coal bucket smaller than any of my tiny bowls, but I have no use for them. Instead I just sail around that lazy river, occasionally bumping into someone failing to respect the one-way system, until I’m spat out at the cash register three tiny bowls, everything I need to take up oil painting, two-day planners and a mini whisk. It’s the little things, truly.