Storytelling Sunday Three: Pick Your Precious

Storytelling Sunday Three? There is no excuse for not joining in with this one! Everyone can do it. Pick Your Precious is about celebrating the little things you love: those souvenirs, bits and pieces, things from your past you can't bear to throw out. You know, the special little something you have tucked away in a drawer or up on a shelf? Or the thing you love most in a room? Or the object you would save if you knew you had to leave the country? Your favourite things.

Ready to begin?

The Mystery Chest

October? Can you believe it? Round here that means slippery leaves on the ground and bare trees, darker nights, extra layers. Maybe it's not quite like that where you are, though. I've always loved that scene in E.T. where they all go Trick Or Treating, and it's light outside. We don't do that here; so that scene is a good reminder to me of the different ways we all see the same things, the different filters we use. As we move through the year, I've been realising how our own personal filters change too. Do you think, I mean, that you would pick the same objects to show off now as you would if I had asked you to list the lot in January? Or would you have picked the same objects, but chosen to emphasize different bits of the story?

if you had asked me in January what Precious I might pick for round Halloween month I definitely would have had an idea...

...our chest of mystery. Everyone here likes to believe that it once belonged to Harry Potter; and that would be because it has his initials H.P. placed on the lid. But it's clear he has no more use for it since it has washed up with us. Truthfully, I wouldn't be trying to grab it if I had to flee from here in a hurry: it's cast iron - I think - and I can't lift it. (Though I guess that means it might survive fire, flood or plague and I could come back for it? ). But I know you want to find out what's inside...

Well, earlier in the year I'd been planning to tell you about its quirkier contents for Halloween...Great Grandpa's false teeth, anyone? Or how about the owner-less glass eye? the locks of baby hair or the Victorian mourning envelopes? there are letters and certificates going back a century or more. The Fair family owned a grocer's shop through the years of the Great Depression; and I could show you the shop ledgers. Tucked inside you'd find letters from customers who were struggling to meet their accounts. It could break your heart, even from this distance. All of these things have their own stories.

But when I started to sift through it all this week, the thing which really spoke to me was a little blue notebook, full of numbers still recognisable as being in my Father-in-Law's hand: "Money Spent Each Term at T.C.D." His college accounts from his years in Dublin at the end of the 1940's. How much he spent on "digs", on a new saddle bag, on train fares and "outside meals": a strange world of gowns and Punch Magazine. You know why this has fascinated me right now, of course. I'll be emailing his namesake, modern day student grandson who has spent the last couple of months wondering how his student loan will stretch and I'll be telling him how lucky he is that he doesn't have to buy his own coal. I think that will give him a smile. And then I'll be tucking that notebook back into the chest, in the hope that another generation will use it as a reminder of what came before. I hope someone else comes across it at exactly the right time. Just as I did. 

Maybe you have a story for us today?

Write your post, introduce it as a Storytelling Sunday story and then come back and link us up. You won't regret it! Everyone meets someone new on Storytelling day You have a full week to add your story, and the rest of the month to come back and read your choice of the others. No big rush! Have a think, take your time. And then? Sit back and enjoy the rest.