2 APRIL 1988, Page 27

The Kitchen Table

In memory of my mother

Making a home was what you could do best; and cookery (the ritual at the heart of it) you had a kind of genius for.

So what I first recall, thinking of you, is a creamy table-top, the grain etched crude and deep, the legs stained black, and you at work, with rolling-pin or chopping-board or bowl; then, later, presiding over guests or children at each day's informal feast.

Your homeliness displaced now, what survives for me of it is this: which now becomes a model of true art: bare boards scrubbed clean, black, white, good work as grace, such