Only hidden "treasure" I've found was at the back of the freezer
you know: those things in packets or tupperware containers that you can't identify until it's defrosted? I've been informed that these are called "lurks". So if you're out of ideas for what to have for dinner, why not heat up some tasty* lurks! Or fish them out for a chilly game of "guess what".



*may not be the case
(ah sod it tinsels chummily, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 14:06, Reply)

Treasures of the deep
Diving with a mask and flippers on holiday in my younger years I found much money on the sea bed, dropped by holiday makers who like to use those water tight money holders that you can always buy from any old shop on the sea front.

However, on a more exciting note, I'm bobbing along the sea bed about 10 feet down one day off a very nice beach on Majorca when I come across an octopus under a rock.

Quite a big octopus as it turns out.

Quite a big pissed off octopus as it turns out (he was sandy in colour, I move his rock for a better look, he turns red).

Turns out that he's a very big pissed off octopus and I can't breath underwater .... I can see in his eyes he knows this.

At this point I have a picture of Terry Nutkins telling me in his calming way that "This wonderful specimen of natural evolution will be more scared of me than I am of it."

Bollocks, he went straight for my me, flapping around and try to squirt ink in every bloody direction.

So I shot it with my spear gun and ended up about £15 better off after selling the bastard to the local fish restaurant.

My Mum and Dad also enjoy treasures of the deep as it turns out that they ate it.
(Tim K, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 13:41, Reply)

Result
i just found a £20 note folded up in my wallet. in a space where i never put money. and i never fold it up. its now my emergency £20.

unless i owe one of you money...? anyone?

aaaaaand this was my first time. was it good for you too?
(Zutroy started without you, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 12:59, Reply)

An Amphibian!
Living in the country, Im a small chap wombling about, and I found a TORTOISE! Alive and well. So I take him home and dad makes a run for him, I called him Ptolomey (posh eh?)kept him for years until he escaped. 6 weeks after the escape im out walking the dog and hear a rustling in undergrowth, its dear old Ptolerrs again! So I found him twice... He was the best tortoise ever and I loved him.. he eventually escaped for good.
(FunnyOnion took his trowsis off, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 12:51, Reply)

No it doesn't
The word "rust" applies to a process involving iron only. When iron oxides, you can call it oxidisation or rusting. When anything else oxidises, its called oxidisation.
(Wrecked Tums, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 11:20, Reply)

I've rediscovered my pedantry
Thanks to xlux. Aluminium does rust. As you state yourself - "the skin forms a thin layer of oxidation", by which I take you to mean "the Aluminium in contact with the air oxidises to form a protective layer of Aluminium Oxide which shields the remaining Aluminium". That oxidation is "rust". Aluminium also "rusts" extremely quickly - you can see it: Scratch a can and watch as the shiny metallic Aluminium turns to dull grey Aluminium Oxide. So, realistically, you never see Aluminium that hasn't "rusted" for longer than a few seconds, outside of an oxygen-free environment.
*Realises Chemistry GSCE was worth it after all.
(Sir Ian Blair, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 11:11, Reply)

I remember....
My ex-boyfriend would regularly find decent porn mags in a small wooded area not far from us. The houses seemed quite posh and i always found it amusing that it was probably dumped by the man on a early morning 'dog walk'. There were even amateur polaroids of some old couple with a mobile number scribbled on them, needless to say we didn't ring it! (Well i didn't anyway)

Not so much hidden treasure, as ermmm..... dirty and cheap laughter i suppose.

I've also found jewellery at the bottom of swimming pools, plenty of notes hidden in bushes and once found a stack of condoms which were ripped/blown up/used as water balloons by myself as a daft 13 y/o.

I enjoyed the girth, but sometimes i find the length a little disappointing.
(lehcar_woo, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 9:46, Reply)

Girly Treasure
I was looking for some wrapping paper last night and stumbled upon a handbag id bought months ago and completley forgot about.

The length was good and so was the girth.
(Oops....did I say that out loud cos I really bloody want to., Thu 7 Jul 2005, 8:23, Reply)

Not me but a mate....
....was the finest finder of hedgerow Jazzmags ever. Nary a week would go by when Jeremy (bless him) wouldn't turn up with at least a couple of wrist pamphlets in various states of disarray, some shiny new but usually covered in bits of field and foliage. Not really treasure by my standards today, but when you're about 7 years old you do have different priorities.
(tinypod will never learn. Ever., Thu 7 Jul 2005, 7:58, Reply)

when my dad died...
and i had to clean out the trailor he lived in. (yup, dad lived in a trailor park)

He collected a whole pile of useless crap including:
His dead brothers' clothes
2 broken metal detectors
4 boxes full of discharged missile shells from the Gulf War
Several pairs of crutches

yay dad
(C. U. N.ext T.uesday, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 1:00, Reply)

None of these are interesting but feel compulsed to respond
1) Moved into a house at uni, under-stair cupboard full of crap. Landlord said "do what you want with it". There was a knackered bike, which we left outside in the hopes it would get nicked. And it did. And a huge box of unopened letters for previous tenants. 6 tenants had evidentally each joined 3 or 4 Britannia music-type cd buying clubs, ordered 10 cds from each each, then buggered off. Letters started with "your account is overdue", went through, "oi, we'd really like you to pay us for your CDs" to "our solicitors would really like you to pay us" and on to "we're a debt collection company who don't want you to pay us , we'd rather take your organs. Oh and there was a hoover that worked a bit as well.

2) Job cleaning halls of residence one Summer. Cleaning a kitchen with an idiot, who pipes up. "why would someone keep half a stale oxo cube in the fridge ?" Cue me "let's have a look then"...hmmm.."I dunno" (casually pockets small amount of resin)

3) Moved to a new house near home. Housemate's mum comes round with drum of magnetic letters for the fridge...and guess what's in the bottom...Bigger than an oxo cube, this time.

Oh, and I found my soulmate in a park. Which was nice.

Apologies for lack of witty sign off.
(eclaire Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-soul, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 23:42, Reply)

Hidden treasures I've found in the garden*
dogshit
rusty nails
washers**
nuts**
bolts**
strange weeds***
random bits of plastic
a tiddlywink(?)
corroded pennies
stones
worms
spiders
unidentified insects
some brown grass****

Seeing as Ipswich was not an important target or military base during either world war (and my street wasn't built until 1983), this lack of exciting finds is not unexpected.

Oh yes, and I once found £20 in my coat pocket. Bonus!

* Stretching the definition of 'treasure', of course.
** From the hand-held lawnmower we used to use.
*** They were hidden!
**** Hidden under the weeds.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 23:24, Reply)

FAO pantherwest
Aluminium doesn't rust, if its pure aluminium then the skin forms a thin layer of oxidation which protects the metal below - just saying!
(xlux, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 23:19, Reply)

The drugs don't work, but the porn does
Used to live in a flat in Kilburn. When turning the mattress over for the first time, I found a copy of "Readers' Wives" or "40 Plus" (or something like that) stuffed underneath.

Not to my taste but evidently to that of Nick McCabe, guitarist for the Verve, who was the previous occupant of the flat.
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 23:13, Reply)

Assorted stuff
About 20 years ago, I found £5 at Butlins in Pwllheli on the last day of our school holiday there when I thought I was completely out of cash. Made all the sweeter by my friend telling me not to bother picking up "that piece of rubbish".

I was wandering home in a fairly drunken haze about 10 years ago when I tripped over a squash racquet. It was still in its bag and in rather good condition. I've never been that good at squash but that racquet took me to the top of the squash ladder in two different offices (against people who'd regularly beaten me before) and I've still got it tucked away somewhere.

About 6 years ago while doing the customary search of the flat I was moving out of, I found a letter under the mattress of the spare bed from one female employee of a major supermarket chain to another who worked at the hypermarket nearby. It described taking young gentlemen into the stores area of the shop and doing terribly rude things with them. I've not been able to look at supermarket workers the same ever since... I put that one back for the next tenant to find.
( S tr app y, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 22:49, Reply)

Eurrgh!
When I was young, I used to play with a 'backward' girl who lived next door. She needed a friend, and I kind of tolerated her because sometimes she do some really dumb stuff. One day she found some treasure - a sort of crystalline rock, and wanted to play 'hide the rock' with me. Of course she hid it in all the obvious places and I found it really quickly. Eventually I got bored and so hid it again without telling her. She then has a hissy fit because she's lost her precious rock, and starts running around the street looking for it. She eventually finds it, and rushes up to me, all proud that she's found it.

Only it wasn't her rock - it was a lump of that weird white dog poo that she'd found by a lampost, and there she was throwing it in the air and catching it. I pissed myself laughing, she started crying - funny how our associations always ended like that.
(Funty, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 22:21, Reply)

Fentruck, Spatula...
...those links do not work. There's a verify code you pair of spacks.
( Laughing Boy, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 22:18, Reply)

step-grannies don't understand proper insulation at all
My grandfather and step-grandmother used to live in a very nice house on a small island off the coast of New England. When my grandfather died back in the 80s, she eventually took things out in preparation to sell the house. Having some shortcomings in the area of common sense, she decided an excellent way to store things would be to erect a floorless aluminum shed across the road in the woods and put stuff in it, and then securing it with your common hardware store masterlock.

After many years go by, she finally gets around to asking my father and I if we can bring our truck across on the ferry so she can finally get everything off the island as she has now sold the house. We get there and tramp into the woods to see this rusty, tilted creation that we get to salvage. After the lock is wrenched off (I'm impressed it was still there to begin with) we are overcome with the fantastic mold smell and the asthmatics among us use inhalers. Entry is heartbreaking as half the shed is lovely old books that are totally ruined due to moisture and mold. One corner of the shed is actually dry, and we find some books that have survived, some clothes that were fashionable in the 70s and - a perfect steiff bear (the kind that goes "Raaaaaaaaaaaanh" as you tip it backwards) just like the one I had as a baby, but much larger. I claimed it immediately lest she decide to store it in another moldy place to see how it fared for the next 10 years.

Length is justified - been lurking for ages.
(pantherwest, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 21:55, Reply)

Just remembered another
My Gran died in January last year. When we went to Eastbourne to clear her house out, it was absolutely full with rubbish (we couldn't even get through the front door).
We found £40 in a handbag on the floor, an unused mop, hundreds of unopened packets of fluorescent tights, a box set of videos about Jesus, and strangest of all, an entire room completely full (waist height) of brightly coloured clothes.

Weird lady.
(PAMPAMPAM, Wed 6 Jul 2005, 21:47, Reply)

Money
I was digging in the sofa because I'd just lost £2 in it. And then I find a £20 note!! I thought that was quite conveniant. Although I never did find that £2.
( DUM4S5 =], Wed 6 Jul 2005, 21:04, Reply)