I come from a family of collectors. When we were children my mother went through phases of collecting different things – piggy banks, china cottages, pill boxes. At the moment I have my suspicions that her assortment of teddy bears is getting larger – she can’t pass a forlorn little furry face without rescuing it from a shop shelf and bringing it home to join the others for a bit of tender loving care. Dad amassed tools. He had a workshop built onto the back of the kitchen which he filled with screwdrivers, chisels, tins of nails and tacks, hammers, saws for any eventuality, bits of wood (my sister and I were always accompanying him to the wood yard), planes, drills, attachments, cans of oil, string and goodness knows what else. Glue. He had a lot of glue.
So, as a child, I began collecting things. Shells from days at the beach; bus tickets, theatre tickets and programmes; pencils (I was always buying pencils with pocket money); Enid Blyton books; note pads and drawing paper. I hoarded them all. Imagine my excitement, at around the age of nine or ten, when someone sent me a chain letter with promises of postcards from every corner of the world. All I had to do was send a postcard from my village to the unknown person at the top of the attached list and forward the letter to six friends. Which I dutifully did and then waited with delicious anticipation for my exponential pile of postcards to arrive, once my name had moved to the top of the list. I waited and watched the doormat under the front door every day for the post to arrive. For weeks. After an eternity, three cards dropped through the letter box. Two were from England, one from Wales. And that was it. Forever. No four corners of the earth for me. It was probably this one event that triggered my long-term cynical outlook on life.
My sister and I moved onto other things. We began collecting badges: the cloth ones that could be sewn onto an anorak – rather like those earned in the Brownies or Guides but since neither of us lasted very long in that particular institution we decided to create our own sleeves of honour. These were very popular decades ago, there being no such thing as designer logo back then. We’d buy them on our holidays – woven badges depicting a county, or a particular town or historical place. This was a craze that only lasted as long as the anorak fitted. My sister went on to accumulating wrapped sugar lumps which she stored in an old cigar box. I think that’s when I gave up and became a minimalist. My brother, in the meantime, was collecting football cards.
I did, however, accumulate a variety of pigs at one point. I made the mistake of admitting I liked them, found them misunderstood and quite cute which was like opening the floodgates for every Christmas and birthday thereafter. They ended up stuffed in a box and then farmed out to charity shops.
So I don’t think I’m really a collector of things. A collector has to be dogged; determined and should enjoy displaying (and dusting) whatever it is that’s being sought. When Son was learning the clarinet at around the age of eleven, we had to visit the home of the piano accompanist who would take him through his music exam rehearsal. Her home was full of frogs. Everywhere. Wooden, knitted, metal, fabric, macramé. On cushions, tea towels, on teacups and saucers. There were pictures on the walls of frogs and she had stone ornaments of them in various poses in her garden. This was extreme collecting. To be honest, it was creepy. She even looked a little amphibian herself. I was glad when the half hour session was over.
Is storing one’s own stories collecting, do you think? If it is, then I am still a collector of sorts. Trawling through my computer files this week, I came across this 300 flash, written some time ago in response to “Theft” – a creative writing prompt.
Mavis opened the battered leather case and stroked the faded purple velvet into which the six silver apostle spoons were nestled. They were perfect; just in need of a shine. Holding her polishing cloth in one hand, she took one of the spoons in the other and twirled it around on the cloth until the little figure shone with a soft glow as she rubbed the tarnish away. She would check the hallmark later in the little reference book Mr Hennessy had given her, after she had expressed an interest one morning, whilst wiping his mantelpiece.
Of course when Mr Hennessy died suddenly, a couple of years ago, it had come as a shock. Mavis had worked for the Hennessy’s for years but she was even more shocked when, continuing her employment, she discovered that Mrs Hennessy had no taste, preferring to display garish china dogs rather than the beautiful pieces of silver Mr Hennessy had collected over the years. She found his collection one morning, stuffed into the back of the sideboard, unloved and forgotten. She took the pieces out, polished them and arranged them on a table but the following week they were back in their cupboard and she was left to dust the loathsome Staffordshire spaniels.
The eighteenth century cow creamer came home first – it looked lovely under Mavis’ lamp in her front room. Next came the owls cruet set and the Mappin and Webb porringer; a tiny snuff box with an enamel lid (in which Mavis kept her sweeteners); an ivory handled paper knife, a pair of Victorian berry spoons and the Paul Storr coffee pot, in use every day since. What Mavis was doing with Mr Hennessy’s collection couldn’t be classed as stealing, she told herself: it was appreciating.
What do you collect?
A great theme. Such a disappointment about the postcards, but at least it gave you an insight. Loved the story. Does books count as a collection, given that I no longer buy them, cos I’ll never read them all. Now, photographs……….
Thanks. I suppose books do count as a collection, as do records and/or CD’s. Or are we splitting hairs? Photographs. Yes, we’ve got lots of those, latterly stored on the computer. The old ones are in fading albums or piled in a box and very rarely looked at although it’s always fun to leaf through them.
How sad to hear only three postcards arrived, Jenny. I used to collect Boyds Bear music boxes, until they stopped making them. This was probably a good thing because you’re right about the dusting. 🙂 Great story!
I know. I don’t really approve now of those ridiculous chain letters – some of them can cause such anxiety. But postcards were a pretty innocuous idea. I obviously sent my letter on to friends who didn’t care as much as I did 😀 I’ve never heard of Boyds Bear music boxes. I’m off to Google them right now.
Another, ‘yes I remember that’ moment. No, I didn’t get flooded with exotic postcards either, so instead I set about collecting penfriends. Hrepna from Finland and Gaby from Austria (or Switz?) are all I can remember though. Trolls. I had quite a few trolls with that amazing coloured hair. I had a few pieces of china, probably influenced by my mother’s collection of green Wedgwood and two china dinner services. I had the badges too 😀 can’t remember where they went, stuck on my rucksack I think, as many were YH ones.
Liked the story. Nice ending, easy empathy there.
Oh my, yes, trolls. I had those, some of which were tiny enough to be rammed on top of the myriad pencils I kept buying. Penfriends – I always wanted one. I corresponded with the daughter of Mum’s school friend for a while. She lived up north and had beautiful writing. Fizzled out after a while as these things do. I never had a foreign correspondent.
Dust! 😏 I’m not really a collector. I do hang on to books by a few favourite authors. At the lake we go through spurts of picking up stones, bits of bark, shells etc. Susan likes beach glass. Broken pieces of coloured glass from disgarded bottles, rubbed smooth by the sand and waves. Luckily these are not easy to find and are quite small, so we just have a small bowl that holds them.
However Mrs S likes owls and also went through a time of everyone getting her owly things. Luckily we have moved on from there.
My kids think I collect bad jokes. Some clergy collect their own sermons. Seems strange to me. Once delivered let them go in peace. Loved the silver story.
Yes, I like that beach glass too. There was an item on our news not long ago where a young artist had collected loads of fragments and created a wave sculpture. It was very effective.
I think you can probably have too many owls. And bad jokes…but maybe not enough of the good ones😀
Well, that was just fun! I never thought of myself as a collector – until a first time visitor looked around my house and said: “I love all your collections!” What collections?? Oh – the roosters, dragons, books, trivets, rural-on-metal paintings, lawyer Santas (I know, right??), pottery pitchers, and other groupings that did, indeed, resemble collections. The only item I’ll admit to collecting is pottery pitchers – because it’s hard for somebody to find a macrame or toilet cover pottery pitcher to gift me. And – lawyer Santas. One can never have too many layer Santas!
Enjoyed your flash, too!
Hi Shel. Actually, I have a few pottery jugs on the kitchen windowsill…oh dear. These collections evolve without our knowing, don’t they? I’m off to Google a lawyer Santa😀 …is this an Anerican thing! 😀
That bit of writing at the end of your post, is my cup of tea. It’s what I appreciate most, and what I collect. I shall save this post just because I know that somewhere down the line, I will pop it up on my computer screen once more. And I will savor it, as if it were golden, for indeed it is golden to me.
I wish you could see that for yourself, as then my collection would grow. Trust in yourself, your talent is there.
Wow Holly, I really don’t know what to say, except thank you for those kind words. I think maybe I should frame them and put them above my desk😊
Great story Jenny! I’m not really a collector either, though stuff arrives and keeps arriving……. I go through phases of clearing out and delivering all the accumulated stuff off to some charity shop or other, which I find very satisfying. Having said all that though I have to admit to currently collecting pretty beads and crystals to add to my light catcher stash 🙂
Thanks Pauline. You and me both – I love a good tidy up and clear out. I went to the charity shop today with a bag of miscellaneous detritus.
I think you’re allowed beads and crystals – after all, you end up giving most of them away in the end😉
Collecting … now there’s an interesting topic. One aspect which you didn’t cover, and which I have experienced, is collections that happen because folks are convinced you are a enthusiastic collector of some such thing or another. My graduate training is in the field of physiology, and the laboratory in which I found myself happened to be focused on the physiological ecology of the molluscs. When they heard this, everyone in my extended family, and I mean every-last-one, began finding and then sending along all sorts of molluscan creations. It was a situation not unlike the frog lady you described. Contributions to my unwanted collection mostly included figurines of various sorts. I also had a snail lamp and several framed art prints! As the years went by, and Joanna and I moved from place to place, much of my collection ‘somehow got lost’ and I can report that none of it exists any longer! D
You made me laugh! It’s so difficult to tell folk who, with the best possible intentions have been adding for years to an unwanted collection, that actually, you’re no longer interested in molluscs/ frogs/pigs, whatever. We have a similar dilemma at Christmas time with a bottle of port situation. We don’t drink the stuff. I have donated pints of it to various school raffles over the years…😆
My major professor in graduate school very kindly gave Joanna and me a bottle of Dewar’s White Label Scotch Whiskey EVERY YEAR for the Holidays. EVERY YEAR we re-gifted the stuff … never opened a single bottle! D
I’m a collector, especially of books, articles, coins, rocks and anything else with any remotely historic or intrinsic value. My wife collects almost nothing and prefers a house – including the garage – devoid of any “clutter,” in fact anything that leaves things in any way besides neat and orderly. This, as you might imagine, has created … tension. I have a very hard time parting with things given to me, especially by elderly relatives, and I suppose that the items they’ve given or left me is a tangible reminder of each of them, even after most of them have long ago passed on.
I can sympathise with both sides here. I wouldn’t easily get rid of anything that was gifted by an elderly relative. I have my grandfather’s book of quotations for instance which is well out of date but still a useful resource. Clutter I loathe. Son and I had a reasonable clear out of the garage only recently and frankly, we’ve only scraped the tip of the iceberg even though we took a car load to the tip.
Haha… fatal to admit to liking something. My friend liked frogs and like you and the pigs, every birthday and Christmas she received yet more, some exceedingly horrible! I made the mistake of collecting little bells and amassed a collection that has spent years hidden in a trunk, only to be taken to a charity shop recently. Some of them cost me a fair few quid too. I do still have a smallish collection of African animals…
I guess I shall never achieve my minimalist dream home. [sigh]
Haha, did your friend do piano accompaniment by any chance? 😆 Yes, it’s best not to mention that you’re interested in anything, even down to favouring a particular colour. Now I’m starting to sound ungrateful.
I wouldn’t want to be totally minimal. It would be like living in a show house. Impersonal.
…but less dusting 😉
I try to be minimalist, but I do like rocks and shells. I have some books and have never admitted to liking something that people then give me (wine and flowers excepted, of course). What a great piece of flash fiction. Can’t imagine what’s going to happen when someone realizes the silver is gone (golly, the coffee pot!).
Thanks Lisa. That’s why I like flash fiction. You can zoom in on a micro story which has the potential for a wider back story and a multitude of conclusions. Also I’m lazy. I have everything in my head. I like to think of it as giving my readers choice😆 But you never know…one day I might take inspiration from a 300 flash and write a whole novel😉
Now that would be fun–and a long-term project!
Cows. When we stopped farming the first time I still missed having cows, so settled for various cow-shaped objects, including a cow creamer, just like in your story, Jenny! Thanks for your fond memories.
Hello Jane, thanks – nice to see you again! I didn’t know you farmed cows. That’s a reason to collect a few mementoes, I reckon.
Love the postcard pyramid fail, and generally how we as youngsters frequently used to watch for the postman hoping he’d stop at our house.
Stamps, marbles, football cards – the usual, though not so much now 🙂
Yes, all we get on the mat these days are bills or catalogues. I’m glad my childhood disappointment afforded some amusement😆😆😆 I think we have a stash of marbles somewhere….
Ha! I never had any luck with chain letters or penpals either. Blogging and tweeting is a little more successful with friends from all over the world! 🙂
I sort of collect, but not compulsively, avidly. Other than books. Don’t mention books and book stores, though I have learned to be a little more restrained in recent years as my reading time diminishes. But the TBR pile only ever increases. I have toys from countries visited (which I could count on one hand if I had some fingers amputated) some butterflies and frogs. Being an early childhood teacher I collected anything i thought might be interesting or useful. Now it is time to start culling. It’s hard, and I’m not yet ready to start on the book shelves, though I do think about it.
I love your flash. Not really stealing? Interesting ethical dilemma.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading!
Bookstore restraint – sounds like an unpleasant condition, doesn’t it? I find it difficult to walk past a bookshop and I enjoy having a reading pile. Once it starts going down I feel obliged to top it up so a bookshop visit is imperative. Or a trawl through Amazon😀
Bookstore restraint is an unpleasant condition. How dreadful would it be to actually arrive at the bottom of the book pile and find there was nothing left to read. Noooooooo!!
Jenny, I took the photos of the 2 granddaughters a week ago, but decided to make it a Thursday’s Doors on Sunday. Just to see if our two (great minds) were on the same wavelength~ were you pondering a week ago, were you pondering on the 14th as I was to post about collecting. Isn’t it funny that we did this one other time but I forget what the subject matter was? 🙂
I like my blue jean jacket that 4 years ago I was dating a travelling man. We would go on “day trips.” Only 4 times were they overnights and they were out of state. I collected badges of places like you and your sister did. Maybe I will have to take a front photo and back photo and create 2 posts? In your honor, Jenny, of course! 🙂
I think we did coincide on similar posts once before but I can’t remember their theme either. It probably was around the start of the week that I began thinking about collections, so there you have it – great minds, etc. None of my old badges exist now, obviously. Those anoraks would have been recycled decades ago!
Oops, I really liked that the “Theft” was someone who would admire and treasure the Mister’s silver items. It makes sense to me that the Mistress of the household shall not notice their loss, not one bit! To me, this is like rooting for Robin Hood. 🙂
Thanks for reading Robin. I like your idea of Mavis being like Robin Hood. Beautiful things should be appreciated, shouldn’t they? 😀
Yes, beautiful things should have someone to appreciate them, as Mavis had for years. 🙂
You seem to have the gift of tapping into things that other people also enjoy or have a view on. Well done!
Books have always been my issue. I can’t just read them and throw them out. I keep them. I have no idea why. I rarely re-read them. I have been better over the last few years and moved them on to someone else to read. Am taking three off to book club this a.m.
Still, I am sitting here with my three book shelves and my friends that I cannot let go of …. yet.
Thanks, Jacqueline. I did used to keep all my books but things were getting out of hand so I took the leap some years ago to only keep the ones I might possibly re-read or ones that might be good for referring to. It was a difficult thing to let go but now I do it regularly, it’s not a problem. And I like that you view them as friends. I used to tell my son that you can never be lonely if you’ve got a good book.
You brought back lots of memories for me here Jenny – I remember collecting a few of things though never with much commitment. Your postcards remind me of my addiction to penfriends at one point – I put my name on a list which was something to do with the Daily Mirror and for years after I would get letters from people from all sorts of places. And I never collected sew on badges, but there was a craze for a while of denim waistcoats, the backs of which had to be suitable adorned with pictures and writings from my favourite bands (my mother didn’t approve of the Alien Sex Fiend one 🙂 ) Great flash – I think Mavis was completely justified in appreciating those things that would only have been left stuck in a cupboard 🙂
Ha! It seems your list worked better than my postcards then. Alien Sex Fiend? Good grief, I’ve never heard of them. I can imagine though it was very cool to have anything to do with them emblazoned anywhere, especially if they were disapproved of by a parent. I remember tearing out the band pictures from my Jackie magazine and pinning them on my bedroom wall just to be annoying. The weirder the better.
I think Mavis was justified too. And there’s nothing to suggest that she wouldn’t eventually put the things back…😉
Oh, Jenny, I related to so many of the things you collected. I wished we were both girls again, sitting together at a big table with our collected items spread out, and we could laugh and haggle and barter and trade. Wonderful post!
And I bet that had one of my chain letters arrived on your childhood doorstep then you would’ve sent me a postcard!
Thanks Marylin 😊
Jenny, I absolutely love this post. So many times when I read your ‘memoirs’ I nod furiously in agreement! I remember it all – those woven cloth badges (and I didn’t last long in the Girl Guides either), the tin of nails my dad had, and, just like your sister, the wrapped sugar lump packets! I loved them! But what I remember most is the exact same thing happening to me as with you over those darn chain mail postcards. You did better than me, I only got one and like you, decided there and then, never to do chain mails of any kind again. And I don’t and won’t!! But I would have sent one to you! Your flash is excellent, I love your stories. Mavis did a good job of ‘appreciating’ 😉 And I’m still laughing my head off at the amphibian pianist…so funny…! Make sure never to tell anyone again that you collect anything, ha! Great post my friend 🙂 xx
I bet that postcard was from me! Well, you never know…and the coincidences that you and I share well, it wouldn’t altogether surprise me!
My sister kept her sugar lumps for years. Every holiday that anyone went on was a great source of additions to her collection. In the old days they were wrapped in little pictures of the place you were visiting – all very colourful. I must ask her what happened to them…
Glad you enjoyed Mavis. I haven’t decided yet whether she gets found out. That’s what I like about flash fiction…you don’t have to decide 😄
Hi Jenny, I remember that story! I love your blogs but wish you would go back to writing fiction again, you’re so talented. I’m not really a collector but I have collected a lot of theatre tickets lately; I like to keep them as souvenirs 😊
Hi Kay! Thank you for saying that. You’re very kind. I’m thinking I need a creative refresher….we’ll have to talk about that when I see you soon. I know you’ve been busy with your studies, but what’s happened to your blog lately? I’m missing your posts.
Funny–for the past few days I have been staring at a bookcase in my basement, filled with books that nobody’s bothered to look at for years. It’s time to bring them in to work and place them in the “free to you” alcove in the library.
I like passing on my books or leaving a paperback in a coffee shop or waiting room or airport. I often put my email address in, in the hope that if someone finds the book, reads and enjoys it, they’ll let me know. Nothing’s happened so far, but I’m ever hopeful😀
Yes, having a hobby kinda also means making a Hobby Room within one’s home too. Cool photo! I always come a tad to close to hoarding.
Ooh, o hobby room- how nice that would be! Our box bedroom doubles up as a laundry, an office and a craft area when the desk is cleared…but a whole room…that would be luxury!