Grandad's Bootlace Hook

Mrs MW isn't the avid hoarder of ancient souvenirs that I am but she does have one or two things which have stayed with her ever since I've known her. This is one, a 3" long hook of the sort one imagines Victorian ladies to have used to tighten their long bootlaces.

There isn't much of a story to go with it, which makes it even more intriguing. It was made by Mrs MW's maternal grandfather, Albert George Mitchell, who worked, during the second world war, as a technician for the RAF, presumably for his wife Maggie.

We don't know what sort of work he was doing but this suggests he was a metal-worker, perhaps a turner.

The hook might have remained buried in a jewellery box had we not had a problem with the basin in our bedroom, where the far-too-fancy mechanism for lifting the plug had broken and we had replaced it with.... 

....a much more sensible piece of high technology. The only problem was that the basin lacked a fixing point for a chain and the plug fits rather too snugly into its hole - hence a new lease of working life for Grandad's bootlace hook.