The radio burbles away in the background.

One of those old, brown, Bakelite radios with tortoiseshell preset buttons on top and a cream dial on the side. Born in 1940, she would of course refer to it as the "wireless". It sits on the kitchen windowsill and as well as providing the gentle, bumbling chatter of the cricket commentary, seemingly omnipresent during the summer months, it also gives the cat an ideal vantage point from which to survey both the kitchen for human activity and the garden for avian activity - essentially, any activity which could potentially result in a tasty morsel. As a bonus, the cat can enjoy the warmth generated by the radio's aging internal mechanisms. Sometimes, when changing positions, he would inadvertently press one of the preset buttons, replacing Henry Blofeld with static. We'd long given up trying to clean off the layer of accumulated cat hair on the radio top.

Countless photos of me and my siblings taken from the garden, posing in Brownie uniforms or princess outfits on the low wall bordering the raised bed, prancing around in swimsuits, spraying each other with hosepipes. Always in the background a familiar silhouette at the kitchen window watching over us, preparing the Sunday lunch. My sister always wanted to eat the raw "stump" of the cauliflower, I always wanted more crumble than fruit, so she would bake more topping in a separate dish. We would ask for evaporated milk in a saucer and lap it up like cats.

Otherwise, she would be tending to the washing machine - an old, rumbling, free-standing tub, wheeled out of its cubby hole once a week, filled by a grey hose connected to the kitchen tap, drained via the same hose draped in the kitchen sink. After grumbling away for a while, exuding its soapy aroma, the integral mangle would be erected and clothes would drop into the plastic bowl, strategically placed on the floor beneath to catch its bounty of laundry. Then the spin dryer would appear and we children would be called upon to load it carefully, placing the circular rubber internal lid on top of the wet clothes. Sometimes, if loaded unevenly, it would fail to spin at full speed and start to bounce across the floor, spewing water liberally around the kitchen rather than in the (again) strategically placed plastic bowl.

In the afternoon, Abba on the record player would temporarily drown out the cricket commentary from the kitchen - luckily, we all liked Abba, including my brother. I was the blond one, one of my sisters had to be Björn. We used to buy ex-jukebox 7" singles with cut-out middles, replacement labels and sleeves from the newsagent opposite our grandmother's flat in West London. Much cheaper. It would be years before I ever bought a full-price 7" single from Woolworth's. Double Dutch, by Malcolm McLaren, I think it was.

Sunday tea would be a cold buffet. We would ask for a "messy plate" (essentially, a bowl) and create a mélange of chopped up ham, cheese, hard-boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, cress and salad cream.

The radio burbles away in the background.