MY BLOODY GRANDMOTHER
had a clear out of her shed, without telling me, which would have been nice, as all my childhood toys were in there.
It got emptied, so all my subbuteo, all my stuffed toys, all my tiny little hand painted soldiers with their fifties die cast metal cannons and tanks and stuff went in the skip.
THE FUCKING SLAG.
IF SHE WASNT DEAD I WOULD KILL HER.

But the worst thing is, my MAHOOOOSIVE Transformers (G1) collection, including MINT condition Optimus Prime, Metroplex and Ultra Magnus all got chucked too.
My Transformers collection alone would now be worth the best part of 3 grand as I had all the boxes/weapons/instructions etc etc.
THIS HAAS MADE ME VERY ANGRY WRITING THIS.
FUCKING SENILE OLD PISS SMELLING FUCKING WHORE.
FUCK.
(UnstableDan Bah, Humbug! ooooh, humbugs, nyom!, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:53, 4 replies)

Starwars and 2000ad
Both gone now.

However I did have a phobia about lego as a kid, not afraid of it, just paranoid that even the smallest single blob had some how ended up in the bin, even though I regularly checked and emptied the bins to check that nothing had got caught up in it.

Despite this I still had an urge to run up the road chasing the rubbish lorry at the very thought that a bit had slipped through my grasp and I wanted to empty the whole damn thing to double check.
(bluehamster, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:49, 1 reply)

Lost and found
A happy story (in the end) for you all.

I'm about 7 or 8 and my mum's Morris Traveller had to go into the garage. But the only garage that would take it was two bus rides away. So mum picked me up from school and we got on the bus to go and collect the car.

We get home and I realise that I no longer have my lunchbox with me. This is especially distressing as we had all been given sweets and prizes that day, all of which were in the lunchbox. We summise that I must have left it on the bus and I cry myself to sleep.

The next morning I wake up and go downstairs. As I enter the back room, there is my lunchbox with all it's contents plus a basket of girly stuff like cream and makeup and a note from the fairies saying they found my lunchbox and returned it to me with a special gift because I'm such a special girl.

I believed this until I was told by my sister some months later that my dad had gone to the bus depot when mum told him about what happened and collected the lunchbox from lost property, gone and bought the basket of goodies and written the note that went with it.
( Joliet, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:38, 5 replies)

Calling Che Grimsdale!
Could you revive Bean Countin' Man? His story of woe was a pompous, ridiculously overblown piece of emotional expoloitation. But it was more entertaining than the posts so far by a long way.

Che!

Are you there? Can you hear me?
(Gravity's Raincoat, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:37, 1 reply)

Not my stuff but...
...my good chum James Curry's mum threw away a shedload of his Your Sinclairs and 2000ADs. Sacre bleur!
(DrDerekDoctors, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:34, Reply)

Mercury
I used to have about 20 cm³ of mercury which I had liberated from some old tilt switches. It was part of my chemistry set, and I used to love playing with it. Look! Liquid metal! No liquid should be that heavy.

Now the rest of my chemistry set was a big box full of junk - unwashed test tubes, crusty precipitates, unlabelled vials, the works. My dad threw the whole lot away when I went to University, including the mercury. It's in some dump now, contaminating the ground water.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:30, 4 replies)

Auctions
My dad had a thing about auctions.

He would bid for and win boxes and boxes of dusty books. And auction off anything he could find.

One Christmas I got a bmx helmet. As it was so icey outside I couldn't try it out.

A week later it had gone missing. My dad said "you never used that helmet so I've auctioned it. But my mother and I have decided to let you keep the money I got for it".

And he handed me 78p.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:30, Reply)

Lost it? I never even got it!!
I recently discovered that my fiancee sent me a really cool present on my 22nd birthday (that's now about 6 years ago.) - She lived in Germany at the time, and sent me some congac and congac dipped cigarillos as a birthday present (con-incidentally, it had been a remarkably crap year that year, and had I received said gift, it would've been the nicest thing to happen to me in that entire 12 months.)- however, they never turned up and it turned out that year was the lowest in my life ever.

I only found out about that gift 6 months ago, when the missus and I were talking about gifts. For the last 5 and a half years, she thought that I was just ungrateful, and didn't want to thank her.

It may not have been worth millions, but in the year that it was sent, had it arrived, it would've been priceless, and very well recieved.

Royal Mail let me down big style on that one.
(Ryushin, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:24, Reply)

Three simple things
Most of the things I lose aren't gone in any single event that I can put my finger on. I never think "Oh my god it's gone!" and ring the police. You're more likely to find me muttering "Where is it?" repeatedly whilst rummaging through boxes of redundant miscellany.

My ipod is the most recent example - I had it with me whilst visiting my parents at Christmas and I've not seen it since. Did I leave it there? Was it stolen? Did it drop out of my bag? Is it sat in a box of things that I've "tidied" away? I only noticed it was missing when I next wanted to use it.

Similar with my watch, a simple identity bracelet style with a thick chain and a tiny face set into the bar. I saw it in a magazine when I was 19, cut out the picture and searched high and low for it until I eventually got it for my 21st birthday. I've looked for another one the same and Guess now only make hideously over "bling-ed" affairs which aren't anything like my beautiful timepiece. If you ever see a sleek ID bracelet watch in silver - please let me know.

Because it was my prized possession I didn't use it all the time and would save it for "best". Did I store it somewhere too safe after I last wore it? Did I get shit-face and lose it staggering home one night only to assume I'd taken it off and put it away when I awoke the next morning? Was it stolen or accidently thrown away with something else?

This has always happened with me - the earliest item that I remember losing like this was a blue reversible egg, that folded out to become a beautiful red triceratops. It was around 1988 and twenty years on I'd still love to know where it is. Did my mum throw it out when we moved? (she doesn't remember doing so) did some jealous kid take it? Is it boxed away under the eaves in my parents house?

It makes me so frustrated to think about these things. The kind of angry helplessness that can only be expressed be tensing up your muscles until you're shaking but immobile. I still dream of finding these things, tucked away in a box or hidden down the back of something. It seems ridiculous but I can't let them go because I can't be sure they are actually lost. I'll often be hoping to to find them when looking for something else and it's that hope and disappointment that is so tiring.

Well, I'm in a crappy mood now so I'm not even going to make a joke about length... Well, maybe a small one.
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:24, 1 reply)

In my day we didn't have Star Wars figures
because I was poor and lived in a poor place. We had cardboard boxes, so we played Star Wars with those instead. Then my mum filled those boxes with junk and took them to a car boot sale. Broke my heart.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:23, Reply)

I just knew I was the only one...
Whose mother didn't throw any treasured possessions out the second they left home.

And apparently the only one never to have owned any Star Wars action figures (we were poor in them thar days).

Can I still play with you or am I now relegated to the you-have-a-funny-accent-so-you-have-to-spend-playtime-alone crowd?
(osok Rebel without a clue, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:20, 1 reply)

Thank you all.

I live around the Wimbledon area…right on the common in fact.

If it wasn’t for you everyday folk and the things you leave behind, Uncle Bulgaria, Madame Cholet, Bungo and the rest of us would surely perish.

So cheers, you bunch of non-recycling wasteful fuckers.

Love,

Tobermory.

…

all together now…’Underground, overground...’
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:17, Reply)

This one hurts
In 1973 my father got a fender twin reverb guitar amplifier, this was the classic year of a classic unit and good examples go for upwards of £2000 today.

In 1990 one of/ the last of it's valves went, not knowing that this was par-for the course for vintage equipment and meant a £15 replacement it was dumped after months of nagging by my Mother. All that was kept was the logo.

It makes me feel a bit queazy even thinking about it. I hope someone savvy at the tip rescued it rather than it simply rot. But there's not a lot i wouldn't do to get that beauty back.
( lordsaccharine b3taing is well retro mate, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:17, 1 reply)

Not me but.....
Got home one day when I was about 9 or 10 to find my Dad's Commodore 64 missing from the shelf under my TV.... went and asked him about it:

"Oh I sold it to a guy at work, along with the box with all the software in it"

The problem? Well, although the Commodore was in fact my dads, alllllll the software and game tapes in afforementioned box were, you guessed it, mine!.

This was circa '92, game tapes were available from the local newsagent at around £4 a pop, I spent about 2 years worth of pocket money on games and my dad not just threw it out, but sold them!

Git.
(batmowes Internet Dating Superstud, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:17, 3 replies)

The first 300 progs of 2000AD (in pristine condition)
Thrown away by my dad only 5 years ago, despite me telling him they were worth a mint.

"They're just comics, and I needed the space in the loft" says he.

The loft is massive, and is only a fifth full of junk.

Pa = Cunt. Grrrr.
( sm.pl.crt.rs I don't fucking know, do I?, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:13, 1 reply)

rubbish christmas
My mum once threw away pretty much all my christmas presents, plus my game boy and all my games.

I'd spent christmas at my dads, and I'd brought all my presnts back in a big gift bag (those heavy dity plastic ones with the rope handles), anyway I kept most the reject presents in that bag in the corner of my room for a while as I had nowhere else to put them, but gradually it became a storage place for anything I didn't want on the floor, so games, books, that kind of thing.

The problem was that the bag ended up in the corner of my room behind my bin and being the sort of person who doesn't empty his bin very often, it overflowed.

one day, I came home and the bag was gone, I questioned my mum and she told me that she had noticed my overflowing rubbish bin and thrown it out for me, along with the big bag of my stuff which she had assumed was rubbish as well.

some of the more memorable things I lost:
my gameboy colour (yes it was that long ago)
about 20 to 30 games including pokemon Yellow
a special addition hardback copy of The Hobbit.
seveal model airplane kits that I hadn't got round to making yet
and £30 of HMV vouchers..

the best part was my mums reaction to what she had done. no sympathy, no appoligy or offer to replace my lost christmas... no she told me it was my own fault for being messy..

needless to say I'm a bit of a neat freak nowdays
(That Random Guy, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:05, Reply)

My chair
My bitch mother has a wonderful chair, but she's thrown away any chance I have of ever getting to sit in it.

Why won't she just die?

Charles Windsor.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:02, 3 replies)

My marbles
No so much thrown away, but definitely lost. At some point in early 2001.

I *really* needed those marbles.
( rofl harris, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 12:00, Reply)

2000AD Comics
When I was about 12 a friend of my Dad's donated me a massive stack of original 2000AD comics, going all the way back to issue 2 I think... In mint condition as well!

I was rationed them out at 2 a week to stop me just reading through them all in one go but still I loved them.

That was until my mum decided to have a look at them, she promptly decided it was all too violent and rather than put them away until I was older she threw them all away.. Words cannot describe how angry I was then, and how annoyed I am now when I think about how much they could be worth now! I daren't even look in case I decide to hate my mum as a result!
(CheekyDave, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:58, Reply)

My early childhood
While my parents have respected my material property, when I was but a we’an, they accidentally threw out something of mine without realising it - my childhood.

I am the oldest of two. This means that I was at the receiving end of the raw un-practiced parenting skills, whereas my sister had the benefit of the parenting skills that came from refined experience. Sometimes, I think I was a prototype for my sister.

Anyway, when I was little, our family moved abroad. This meant that all of a sudden, I was in a country where none of us could speak the native language. My parents, in their infinite wisdom sent me to a local school. This meant that I ended up speaking a different language at home than I did at school. Unsurprisingly, I had trouble communicating with my peers.

They say that kindergarten is where you learn your basic person-to-person interaction skills. Because I spoke a different language to everyone else, I did not fit in. This meant I became isolated form the rest of class and missed out on acquiring these skills. I hated kindergarten! I even remember I sort of gave up playing with the other kids and ended up hiding in a laundry basket. According to my mum, I would often say “Go away!” in the local language while I was asleep. This is not a way to spend your early childhood. This continued in infant-school. By then, I was developing the ability to differentiate between the two languages and speak both of them, but couldn't speak either of them as well as someone from my age (previously, I may not have been aware of the differences between the two languages and just adapted to whatever way the others around me spoke without being aware of the concept of different languages).

Apparently, I hardly communicated verbally until the last few months of infant school. By then, people were beginning to be concerned. I was taken to a hospital to have a go on an EEG machine to see if my brain was wired up properly. At first, the experience was a bit scary, but when I realised I was wired up to some complicated looking piece of equipment, I felt excited about being connected to a machine. The readings indicated that my brain was all wired up as it should be and completely normal. The doctors came to the conclusion that speaking different languages at home and at school was preventing my social growth. No shit Einstein! Even so, I was sent to a child-psychiatrist type person for some time for further evaluation.

By now, it was time for me to start primary school. My parents had finally seen the light and had sent me to a (more expensive) English-speaking school (my sister was starting kindergarten then, so she went to an English school right from the start). At first, speaking English at school felt a bit odd because I had always associated school with a foreign language, but I quickly got used to it. However, by then, it was too late - the damage had been done. I wasn't very good at making friends. I did manage to make a few friends, but because it was mainly a school for expatriates, there was a high turnover of pupils. I was unlucky enough to pick friends who would leave shortly after. It was as if everything I tried to build up in life kept toppling over (see future QOTW answer for how this plays out).

Throughout my life, I have been a shy person. Even today, I'm still a bit shy, but nowhere near as shy as when I was younger. It is still an unanswered question if I would have still been shy even if I had gone to an English-speaking school right from the start, or if it was the isolation at an early age that did it.

Throughout my early childhood, I have felt isolated - partially because I couldn't communicate and partially because I didn't know how to communicate. Generally, I have memories from the time in which I was feeling very bored and understimulated. But on the plus side, I cultivated my imagination and along with my intelligence, used that to fill in the gaps in my worldview that resulted from not having participated in enough conversations. I've become fond of my weird imagination and like being an oddball, but given the choice, if I were to do my childhood all over again, I would want my parents to have remained in England where I could have played with kids who spoke the same language as me.

On the plus side, my parents are ace! They never threw away any of my stuff, and since I left home for the first time, they have always been there for me. They're well meaning but just didn't get it right the first time round.

To be continued in a future QOTW...
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:54, 4 replies)

Childhood Innocence
Not funny, not clever, just fucking tragic.

My father died of cancer when I was 11. He'd had skin cancer some years before and had it removed (all the time I knew him he had a big scar on his face from the skin graft). About a year before his death he went to the doctor to say he'd got that "funny feeling" and thought the cancer might be back again.

Fucking doctor didn't believe him.

My father ended up with cancer nodes behind his knees, from something that started near his face. If I ever see that cunting doctor again I will make him eat his own balls.

We kept him (my father, not the doctor) at home as he slowly declined. After a while, he became bedridden. Then he had to have a frame to keep the blankets off as he was in so much pain he couldn't stand the weight. He went through a box of morphine a day and was still in excruciating pain much of the time.

Eventually he couldn't speak and couldn't chew. I'd bought my mother a seive (one of those things you use to sift flour) that Christmas and she wore a hole in it mashing up veggies for dad to digest, as that was about as much as he could stomach.

Except he couldn't stomach it - he threw it up regularly. At this point he was too weak to sit up, so someone would have to help him sit up to throw up into the bucket kept beside his bed. He was also too weak to yell, or even talk most of the time, so he would signal his need to vomit by grunting.

This meant that someone had to be in the room with him at all times, otherwise there was a real risk he would pull a Hendrix and drown in his own vomit.

Can you see where this is going?

My brother (13) and I (11) would have to take shifts sitting alone with my dying vegetable of a father in case he had to throw up. Thankfully we weren't expected to help him sit up to do so but had to go and get my Mum.

(This is making me so angry my hands are shaking - I've had to walk away from the keyboard several times just to get this out. It's not cathartic - it's just making me fucking angry.)

I remember the morning my mother came in to my room to tell me he had died - I was relieved. I remember early on in my father's illness - before my mother told us he was going to die - seeing one of my school chums being picked up and hugged by her dad and thinking I was never going to get to do that again.

Fucksocks. Too early to drink.

Length? About 6 to 8 months of pain and humility (him, not me).
( argyleblanket The man on the roof works for me, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:44, 11 replies)

Throwing away the best.
Every week on QOTW I throw away the chance of making it into the top page by writing a crap answer that no one likes.*

*Except bastard collegues go meee!
(Miggyman, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:40, Reply)

My girlfriend
Fucked it right up last summer. Currently, making the same mistakes this summer with the new, much better one.

I will never learn.
(whitehorse, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:37, 2 replies)

Things people lose
I'm an expert at finding important things that people lose/ throw away.

So far me and my mates have managed to find a piece of the true cross, remains of the bloke who was meant to be the first black president of America, Boudicca frozen in carbonate and Excalibur; all hidden somewhere within the West Country.

I am a member of the Bonekickers archaeology team though
(mon bison powered by magnets, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:35, 8 replies)

Monkey and Gloves
I left my Monkey behind on a plane flying back from Germany when I was five, I loved that monkey. Whilst not technically my mum's fault I stilled blamed her never the less. I was given another monkey toy but it was never the same.

I was forever losing gloves, so much so that I had them tied together with string and threaded through my coat sleeves. But the string felt constrictive and irritating so I snapped it and kept my gloves in my pockets. I lost one on the train.
I was 14 at the time.
( Weejock, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:29, Reply)

I didn't have any star wars toys.
I was too old. But I did have a large Thunderbird 2 from about 1970. It was plastic, about 14 inches long and 9 inches wide - the dimensions might be incorrect because I was only likkle and it might have only seemed that big.

My dad stood on it and put his foot straight thru the cargo pod. My mum thru its broken carcass out without any chance of repair.

Crying tears of dispair was not in it!

(Don't be too sad for me - As compensation, we had a semi-circular laundry bin made of plywood with a hinged door on top. My mum let me play with this by laying on it's flat side and lowering the door like a T-bird2 cargo pod. It was ok, but I really didn't like the smell of used nylon tights that always seemed to be there. She wouldn't paint it green for me either.)

Length: see above.
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:25, Reply)

Priceless junk....
I’ll recap slightly for those of you who may have missed any of my previous posts….

My father is Scots and was brought up as a devout Roman Catholic – friends in the priesthood, personal last rites kit, the lot.

My mother converted from common and garden Anglicanism practised by millions in the UK in the form of weddings, births, funerals and that’s about it to Roman Catholicism – bells, smells and Lourdes.

I was brought up in what might be described as a Catholic ghetto – albeit a lower middle class suburban one which featured polite semis, a startling resemblance to Life on Mars (especially as my dad was a plain clothes policeman) and was almost entirely peopled by either Scots or Irish émigrés.

In fact so bad was this entrenched Celtic ghetto that when I finally met teachers who were English and not members of the cloth I was amazed as they were – me at the realisation that they don’t practise corporal punishment in senior schools and they at my ability to speak French with a perfect Galway accent despite having lived in Kent all my life.



But it’s not the Celtic part of me that I have thrown away…that part, the part that gets freckles and Billy Connolly jokes, the part that sees the gritty realism in Father Ted (and I’m not kidding about that one), the part of me that only needs to smell Mr Sheen and to suddenly be back in the entrance hall of the convent standing in a shaft of sunlight surrounded by dust motes.

That part of me is still safely locked inside, only to leave when I lose continence and sentience.




The part of me that I have long since thrown away is the child in me that went into the Confessional and made up sins – I swore at my mother in my head, I told a lie to my teacher erm, that one was probably true, I had impure thoughts about Peter Holt even the priest wouldn’t have impure thoughts about him, he smelled!.


The bit that has gone for ever is the girl who cried at her own wedding – which coincidentally happened fifteen years ago yesterday. That girl who believed in the sanctity of marriage, that vows are taken forever, that promises are made to be never broken, that girl who believed that marriage was one of the holy sacraments to be taken only once in a good life.

She’s long gone.

I still have very close friends who are devout Catholics, regular church goers, who give part of their time and money to the institution they believe in…and it works for them.

In many ways I envy them their faith but mine?


Mine I loved and lost and threw it out when I finally realised that that Footprints story – the one about the man walking along the beach of his life and seeing only one set of footprints when times were most hard. God tells him that at that point he was not forsaken; instead those were the times that God carried him.



Well, he must have done his back in when I needed carrying.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:23, 9 replies)

Mothers are evil at times...
My Dad had a real old, but extremely impressive-looking Hi-F- stack system. It had everything; seperate Amp, tape deck, radio deck, actual deck (for ye olde vinyls) and a load of other cool stuff with 2 huge speakers. He said I could have it.

She gave it away.

Then there was my Spectrum. She tried to swap it with a friend's one that didn't work. I saw right through it and sadly at the time I was too young to see the evil intent, cause I'd love to shout at her for that one. I got it back though.

Mothers; they can be real evil at times. Love 'em, though.
(Stephen5555 is posting on, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:21, 1 reply)

LOST:
Two very tall buildings. Used to be in Manhattan. Could have sworn I left them right there.

If found please drop me a line on (America) 911.

Thanks,

N. York
(Sir Harrington Titsmith disgraced himself on, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:19, 4 replies)

The phone number of the guy I pulled last night
Bollocks.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:16, 6 replies)