The Good Life That Never Left Me

Thank You, Margo

Yesterday I heard that Penelope Keith, who played Margo in The Good Life, had died.

It surprised me how sad I felt.

Not because I knew her, of course, but because her passing brought flooding back a little corner of childhood that has never really left me.

When I was growing up, The Good Life wasn't just another television programme. It felt almost... possible.

Dad had a huge vegetable garden. Every year he'd plough it with the most extraordinary contraption that looked as though it belonged in another century. We had plum trees, sheep, geese and an old sod cottage tucked away on the property.

 

On winter evenings we'd gather in front of the pot-belly fire to watch Tom and Barbara.

Mum would be spinning wool or knitting our winter jumpers. Dad would be noisly wrattling a newspaper. The fire crackled. Outside it was cold. Inside everything felt safe.

As a child, I was absolutely convinced Dad was going to hand in his notice at the council and we'd go all in on self-sufficiency.

Looking back, I don't know whether he ever seriously considered it.

But I did.

Somewhere in those evenings, something was quietly taking root.

Long before I had a pottery studio, I wanted the life Tom and Barbara had in The Good Life. Not the goats necessarily... but the vegetable garden, homemade meals, making things yourself, and finding joy in ordinary days.

I think that's what my ceramics have always been about.

A garlic grater because dinner tastes better when it's made from scratch.

A little jug for flowers picked from the garden.

A favourite mug for a quiet cup of tea.

Pieces that become part of everyday life rather than being saved for best.

People sometimes ask where my ideas come from.

The answer is a pot-belly fire, a sprawling vegetable garden, a family who made rather than bought, and a television programme that gave a little girl a hankering for another way to live.

So thank you, Penelope Keith.

Thank you for being part of a programme that quietly shaped how I see home, contentment and the simple pleasures of everyday life.

Some stories don't finish when the credits roll.

They keep growing, decades later, in gardens, kitchens, workshops... and sometimes, in a pottery studio at the edge of the sea.