brown glass, square-shouldered, almost full. shaken once it has the look of a thin tea; left alone it settles into the colour of dark rain over a slate roof. the cap unscrews with the dry tick of a watch and lets out a smell that, in the corner of the eye, becomes the chip shop on the road from the harbour.
the label is the older kind: a thick paper, cream gone yellow at the edges, the name in a black italic the height of a thumbnail. two hairline rules above and below. micro-type announces the year of founding, the metric volume in awkward parenthesis, the acidity, and the king's seal someone once knew how to read.
used for chips, for pickling onions the colour of a bruise, for washing the kettle when it has gone limescaled and stops singing. a small splash in the rinse of a glass, says the grandmother, makes the water leave no marks.
poured onto a saucer and left on the shelf above the radiator, it dries to a pale ring that does not come up with a cloth. only with another splash of itself.
see the brighter olive oil, the steadier slow kettle, and — if the smell starts to follow you out of the room — the small silence.