Esperanza has always been a place that people return to, very few of the people who have called it home have been born here.  It has also been a place where objects return; generation upon generation has closed down other houses or flats and in doing so they have stored things at Esperanza, sometimes temporarily sometimes permanently.  This, of course, makes for an amazing jumble. 

In any event the latest, thoroughly unexpected, return was rather large and rather heavy.  A cousin called us up, they were cleaning out their shed and had run across one of the cast-iron urns from Esperanza, would we like it back?  Well, yes.  We assumed that it was one of the missing pillar urns, because out of the original three, one was smashed and two ‘vanished’.  Well no….  Much to our surprise, it was a mate to the Large urn that stands on the eastern stone stairs.  It had originally been at the cottage, before it was sold in the early ’70’s.  At two feet tall, nearly three feet wide, and made of half inch thick cast iron, plus Victorian ornamentation…they are something else again.  It came home in the trailer of the little tractor, thundering down the highway to the amusement of all and sundry, since getting it into a pickup was beyond our lifting abilities.  Of course, what precisely will we do with it?  Place it on the other stairs perhaps?