These are the earrings I’m wearing today. I last wore them on my wedding day, 49 years ago.

They’re nothing special (look at those awful settings around the stones) but to me they’re intensely special. My grandfather gave them to my grandmother in 1919, and then he died in the Spanish Flu pandemic.  She gave them to my mother. My mother gave them to me. I wore them for my wedding and wished I hadn’t, because they had old-fashioned screw fittings that just about killed my earlobes. We think they’re Italian.

All these years later I’m having a jewellery adventure. My friend Bernice mentioned a very good manufacturing jeweller here in Wellington, and I thought, “Get those earrings changed!” I also thought, “Do something with those old rings.”

Brian Barrett and his wife Helen have a studio in the nearby suburb of Karori. Their website is https://bhbdesigns.co.nz/ - currently undergoing redesign as I write this. I can’t recommend them highly enough – lovely people and beautiful work. All their contact numbers are there.