We always used to go places as a family and end up coming home with something to remind us of where we had been. Rarely was it something you could buy. When the motorbike and sidecar broke down in Hertfordshire we sat in a field and I strung a load of acorns together in necklaces. And we have several shell boxes here from beaches where we used to live, one of which my mother loves as a jewelry box.
Dotted around the house are stones from beaches, they have to be special colours or shapes and some of the pebbles have the town and year scratched into them, which was my innovation because I have a terrible memory. I am always impressed by the women in the family who know to the centimetre where something was found, the day and time and the weather conditions. And even more so when you realise they are dotted around bookcases and window sills and if I moved them all around they could be put back in their exact place. That’s an amazing talent for three dimensional memory.
And though it all needs cleaning now and again, there is something reassuring, sad and wonderful about picking up a memory that needs dusting.