The little ballet dancer was from Granny's house. By the time she came to me, Granny was being carted off into an old folks' home and her Christchurch house of decaying pre-quake dignity was being cleared out to sell.

Granny's house held wonder for me as a child. It was full of small, exquisite, magic things. The ornate art deco cigarette lighter, with with two golden storks frozen in perspex. Charlie the wooden Horse, that could be unharnassed from his cart and allowed to gallop free on the marbly carpet. The silouhetted head of the black woman with a big gold earring. The laughing Indian salt and pepper shaker couple nestled together in a pink china canoe (remember these were less enlightened times).

But she who remains my closest link to deeply flawed chain-smoking Granny is the tiny china ballet dancer. Here she is now, with her other old house-mates: arms held aloft, on tippy tippy toes in her pretty green shoes, waist pinched into a matching green bodice.

But Oh! the pink skirt! In intricate, impossible ceramic lace. How did it get there, that lace? I knew as a child that of course it had been sighed onto her solid underskirt by fairy magic, then later imagined it being painstakedly folded in place by some kindly Gepetto. Layer after frothy candyfloss layer, until it was ready to have the tiny flower buds stuck on.

Maybe Charlie, the golden storks, the Indian couple and black lady head, maybe they envy her elevated position as the one most gazed-upon, the one most likely to lead the now-ageing child back into Granny's magic house.