Found Porn etc...
It's not so much the stash itself, more what it represented at the time..

Cue B3ta wibbly lines ----

Back in the summer of 1982, we two elder Sparkie siblings were busy studying, and working in our respective part-time extra pocket money kind of jobs... I was working in a Menswear shop, and my year-younger brother had a morning paper round, which involved him arriving at the paper shop earlier than the others, in order to sort the newspapers into rounds. (routes to US readers)This fact may prove useful later in the tale..

One Saturday, there was a huge thunderstorm, after a dry spell, and the rain rained down in great, fat splats, seemingly for hours, especially when stuck on a slow moving bus. I alighted at my stop, and fought my way through the monsoon to the family home. I had recently been entrusted with a front door key, and so I took careful pride in using the front door, and so missed the first pointer. My Mum greeted me in the hallway, with a shocked, giggly attitude, beckoning me to follow her into the kitchen, giggling further, so I shed my wet shoes and went after her. There, over every available surface in the kitchen, including the (bemused) dog's bed, were dozens and dozens of porn magazines, all soaked and in various stages of stuck-together and driedy-outyness. "I think I've saved some of them, but you'll have to help me with the rest, go and fetch your hairdryer"

"What the.. where did you get these, mother?" I blithered at her..

"They were under the shed in the back garden, the rain washed some of them out, so I tried to rescue the rest, there's loads!" she gasped between fits of giggles, "and I found these as well!" she passed me a big patterned paper bag crammed with condoms.."Don't 'spose you want to tell me what you've been up to?"

"EH? what... Me? Have you lost your conkers?" I blurted..Of course I knew exactly what was up. I had spent the preceding term at our school fending enquiries from "Customers" of my brother, who had by this time amassed a fledgling business empire, selling "gentlemen's relaxing literature" and "French Letters" to the great unwashed of the fourth and fifth year. He eventually confessed/boasted that he had been sort of "finding" the magazines at the paper shop, and his mate's neighbour was a family planning nurse who felt it his bonded duty to ensure that everyone was using protection, hence the copious supplies, and the paper bag, but that's another story

I must admit to suprise at my Mum's attitude, but she's a sixties girl who believes that if you supress things then they come out later in "bad" ways, oddly she was of the opinion that she was saving my brother's associates from a lifetime of homosexuality and the priesthood, with my hairdryer..
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Thu 6 Nov 2008, 23:24, Reply)