I keep it in my wallet
I hardly ever think about it, except when I change wallets and realise it's not in there, then I freak out a bit.

It's a page from some graphic design/art collection book, containing just type detailing the writer's experience with a Ladybird book about Jason and the Argonauts, and comparing the moral of the story to the times in your life where wonderful stuff happens, to marvel as it does, but to know that things don't last forever and to remember to move on with fond memories, ready to knuckle down to the next thing life throws at you.

I shrank it down to card size, laminated it, and now it goes with me everywhere. My life and career has been very random, and it really resonated with me when I found it 6 years ago, and still does.

Failing that, I would go mental if somebody knicked my favourite spoon - it's a large tablespoon, silver plated, with the original ODEON logo stamped into it on the handle. My gran found it at a junk fair about 50 years ago, and it's such an odd object, I love it.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Fri 9 May 2008, 15:03, 1 reply)

not a fire
but I lost a lot of stuff in a flood nearly 2 years ago.

Now I know exactly what I'd save should similar occur again. My photographs.

Would you like the story? Oh yes, you know you would.

though bloody hell this has ended up long!

It was way back at the end of my degree. Ah yes, those fine halcyon days when I didn't have to be ground-breaking, I just had to do exams. *sigh* It's so much easier to motivate yourself into doing "hard sums" when you've got an exam to do. Fucking research. *grumble grumble*

yes, you may have noticed that I'm riting this in office hours. In order to hide my slacking, I'm currently typing in WinEdt, so it looks like I'm doing work. If a few LaTex ommands creep in, that's why.

er... where was I?

Ah yes.

So, the scene: I'm about to finish and get hucked out of my house. I'm also going to move o Nottingham to do more physics (or pretend to) in September. In between are 2 months of living with the parentals and 2 siblings.

Now, the house my boyfriend and I had lined up or Nottingham (for he too is an uber-geek, albeit of the more mathsy variety) was quite large, with a garage. There's a reason we need 3 bedroom house with pleanty of garage/shed type storage. We have a lot of stuff. I in particular have material possessions enough to make even the most prolific shopaholic blush.

---
I'd like to point out at this juncture, that it's my hobbies that cause this: I'm big on music, so have many many cds; I like sewing, so have a sewing machine and several large boxes of fabric; similarly, I like to knit so have boxes of yarn; to top it all, I play the sodding tuba (or rather *can* play the tuba. I don't do it very often these days). This is of course, ignoring the many boxes of books. They don't count. Books are a necessity.
---

I inherited this tendency to accumulate things from my parents. Their house is full of junk collected over the years. I really mean full too. You know those TV shows about crazy people who haven't put anything in the bin for 8 years? Full like that. There was no way I was getting me and all my stuff into their house, even if it was only for 2 months.

Clearly something had to be done. So I found a self-storage place in Coventry (I went to Warwick uni, so yes, I've lived in Coventry. Some days I miss it.). Plan was to put things I wouldn't need over Summer in there then pick it all up en route when moving to Nottingham. Nifty hey?

Well, I thought so at the time.

I carefully sorted my stuff out: Would I need my dictionary? No. My parents have one. Would I need my washing machine? No. Would I need my evening dress? Hell no. Would I need my lecture notes? God, I hope not. You get the idea.

So, I pinched the parents' volvo for a weekend and moved all my stuff around. I filled in the form saying I wanted the place for 2 months (though only paid for the first month straight up). Then I ticked the best box in the world. The box that said: "Yes" in response to the question "would you like insurance?".
---
Second point to make: if you need/have contents insurance, check it now. Really *think* about how much you need. Your stuff is worth more than you think. Take the time and do some sums. If you're a prolific purchaser of DVDs, count them and multiply by 10. That's what they should be insured for. It's a pain the arse, but if you're under-insured and need to make a claim, they really screw you over.
---

I left my stuff secured by padlock and went my merry way back to Surrey, whence I proceeded to mark foundation level maths GCSE (soul-destroying) to earn some quids.

Amazingly, I've forgotten the date, but after a while, I got a letter saying there had been a flood. An epic flood. 3ft of muddy water from Coventry canal had entered the storage unit. It was the first time on record that the area in question had been flooded, so the water had really gone all out to make up for poor performances in the past.

Needless to say, I leapt in the volvo and hot-footed my way up there to see how bad it was.

It was bad. Up to the 3ft level, everything was covered in brown sludge. I'd purchased cardboard boxes for the storage, and man, I'm glad I did. They were bastard big things, made of corrugated cardboard so fucking strong, and almost exactly the same height as the water level. So luckily, only the lower boxes were trashed. And my washing machine.

I was slightly sad as I lobbed my evening-gown in the skip set up outside. My love of books caused some minor pain as I hurled my dictionary, and my complete collection of inspector morse books. I almost felt some pleasure at chucking out a large pile of cuddly toys, which I'd never quite had the guts to chuck out before. I laughed with glee as I flung my old computer away and enjoyed the pleasing crash it made into the skip. I breathed a sigh of relief at seeing my lecture notes undamaged and I was thankful that crockery can be cleaned easily, but in general it was fairly amusing just throwing things away, which I knew could be replaced.

Then I noticed something which made my stomach heave. My shoebox of photos was in there. And the negatives. I had to sit down and I sobbed for several minutes. See, photos don't do well in water. The picture literally washes off. My memories were trashed. Images of people I've known and might never see again, lost forever. Wonderful photos of wonderful places I've been (and I've been to a few wonderful places) gone forever.

I was inconsolable

Until I realised something. Not all my pictures were there.

A year previously I'd decided to buy a fookin' huge photo album for my favourite pictures, and this I'd felt was too precious to put in storage. Similarly, my photos from Tibet were in my box of "things from Tibet" and also had not been stored. The box of stick ex-photos didn't need to be worried about, these were pictures I simply didn't care too much about.

I can't remember a time I've felt that relieved.

Since then I've actually remained woefully lax about photo storage, but remembering this has made me want to sort that out, so a few hours will be given this weekend to backing up my digital photos and putting the discs somewhere safe. No way I'm going through that again.

Also, any self-storage place I use in future will have to be on high ground.



Length: about 6 inches, bright purple and made of silicone.
( catness, Fri 9 May 2008, 15:00, 2 replies)

Holocaust Tins
My parents have a tin of prunes which have been in the cupboard for 12 years.

I don't think it's exactly a treasured posession, but I know they'd go mental if anyone were to ever eat them.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 9 May 2008, 14:30, 7 replies)

Hmm...
I hate to come across as completely materialistic, but I have a lot of stuff i'd like to save from a fire:

Xbox 360 & PS3
42" 1080p Sony TV
My computer, 30" monitor, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air
My entire NIN collection, including signed white label vinyls & the Ghosts I-IV LE boxset
My Grandfather's purple heart
Both of the original Dali sketches I own
Three reels from the first showing of Star Wars: A New Hope
The 17th Century Bible that's been passed down through my family
The Ark of the Covenant

I'd probably end up rescuing some clean underwear though, and claim the rest on insurance. It's just stuff.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Fri 9 May 2008, 14:22, Reply)

Bert
Years and years ago when I was about 8 years old I was sleeping in bed one night – as I often did back then – with the window wide open to let the cooling summer breeze into my room. I imagine I was dreaming about Lego or the strange feelings I had just started getting in my manly bits.

Suddenly I let out a scream – I could feel a sharp pain on my chest – I looked down and switched on my bed sight light to see a small red, raised mark on my chest.

“aarrghghmememmmde” I shouted again “EEEEOOIIIPPPPPHH”
“MMMaaaaaaaaarrrggfff” Again another sharp pain

I jumped out of bed, put the main light on and glimpsed a very, very red and raised chest in the mirror. Then I saw it. A wasp was drunkenly hovering around my bed. I can’t say I have good vision, but, I swear to god I could see its shit eating grin and satanic eyes. The complete fucker had stung me a total of 7 times in the space of a minute and I now had a swollen and very painful chest

“Im going to get you” I called out – which in hindsight was probably not really too understandable to a wasp.

I ran to the bed and grabbed a pillow and thwacked the sleep-robbing fucker several times. Surprisingly it was not dead, but, was clearly injured. It kept buzzing round in circles on my sheet trying to straighten its bent wings so it could launch another attack.
Now I didn’t want to touch it, it might sting me again, so I looked around my room for something to kill it. I know I could have just smacked it with a book, but, this trigger happy fucker now had a taste for flesh – I wanted to hurt it.

I scanned my room. In the middle of my bedroom floor was a large tube of PVA glue. Earlier that day I had been pictures out of cut up coloured card. I grabbed my empty drinks glass of the bed side table, flicked the wasp in it with a scrap of card and filled the glass up with PVA glue – to the very top – and watched it take its terminal breath. Then I ran crying to mummy.

Now what I didn’t know about PVA is that if it’s left out in a glass over night it goes rock hard and its milky colour turns clear. When I got home from school the next day I noticed that the wasp was now part of a perfectly smooth and large cylinder of plastic. It was stuck in the very centre in some terrified pose. To an eight year old it looked fucking ace.

I named the wasp Bert

Every time I move house, every time I go on holiday, every time I go anywhere that I might have to sleep for a few days – so does Bert the Wasp. It’s a reminder to all of his waspish cousins what will happen if they fancy some KMWIP flesh. For nearly 20 years he was my suspended animation companion.

And I was not stung once

Last year I took it on holiday with me and those lovely people at American Airlines sent my suitcase to the opposite side of the earth to where they sent me. I did get my case back after a month. Out of all the items of clothing, electrical and other holiday type garb that had gone missing on its way back to me – I was most devastated to lose Bert.

I am sure that where ever he is he is happy though – as he sent another black and yellow cunt to sting me the very next week.
( KISS.ME.WHERE.I.POO Signed the sex offenders register on, Fri 9 May 2008, 14:20, 4 replies)

My bath
is the only thing I really care about. I suppose it's because I like being naked and wet.

I bet it would be really hard to save from a fire though, what with it being connected to the house with pipes and fused to the floor and two walls and being too heavy for me to actually lift if I DID manage to disconnect it...

I suppose I could always buy a new one though.

Or just strip in the rain...
( Mellicious is made of candy, Fri 9 May 2008, 14:03, 17 replies)

Something I want dearly to rescue, but cannot.
Serious answer time.

What I really would rescue, if I could, was the place I grew up in. It's not threatened by fire, but by developers and yuppies.

The place in question is a small community in the Adirondacks. Due to it being a national park overseen by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) there is no industry up there. Consequently the main forms of income are a) tourism, b) various service industries such as grocery stores and restaurants, and c) being a developer. Given the price of land and the lack of places of employment up there, this means that the people buying and building there are rich, and only come there in the summer and winter for boating and skiing. This also means a profusion of mini mansions, a competition to build the ultimate Chateau de Fuque You.

Imagine growing up in the woods, with the deer and chipmunks as friends and the wind sighing through the trees as you played. Now imagine coming back as an adult and finding the woods gone, with pretentious monuments to ego standing where there were once majestic hemlocks and birch. Instead of silence at night and a road you could walk in the dark without encountering another person, there are now security lights everywhere, dogs that bay at you and drunken parties with very loud Classic Rock blaring through the remaining trees.

It's much like watching your house burn in very slow motion. Places that were dear to me are now gone forever, and I am powerless to stop it.

I have not spoken much about this to anyone, not even the Lunatic Artist, but it's been killing me. I dread going home, because every time I do there's another abomination on the landscape. Every time I walk the roads I hear the woods mourning, and don't see or hear the deer and chipmunks I once knew.

I've lived in Virginia for fifteen years now, and a part of me still longs for the Adirondacks- but I know that even were I able to go back there, it would utterly break my heart. So on the (hopefully) far-off day when I inherit my share of my parents' estate, I may retain one chunk of woodland for my kids, but will otherwise walk away from it and try to re-establish myself somewhere else.

I confess, as I write this my eyes are welling up a bit. I try very hard not to think about it, but when I do I feel sick and sad and scared. Every bit of magic in the world, every beautiful place, is destined to be ripped up by the yuppies and turned into another suburb, barren of spirit and life. I see it happening here in Virginia as well, up toward the area south of Washington DC, and see it crawling down through the area where the Lunatic Artist grew up- and it's killing her as well.

Compared to that, my furniture and other belongings are trivial.

EDIT: Ya want to know what really bothers me about the whole thing?

It isn't even the fact that houses are being built- it's that these are not houses per se, they're vacation spots where the yuppies come to see the funny animals and roar around on their snowmobiles and jet-skis. It's where they come to get drunk on the weekends and have all their buddies come and hang out and get ripped.

In other words, they don't really care about the land. It's just another status symbol to them, another bit of cock-waggling, another way of saying that they have more money than you do. It could be anywhere, really- but because the Adirondacks are expensive and have all this space into which they can belm and go farting around on their machines with their buddies, this is where they go.

And as they do so it becomes less and less of the place they bought into, and more of a suburban environment.

One thing that I was rather proud of, though- a McDonalds opened there a few years ago, and last year it went out of business. Put your special sauce on that one, bitch!
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 9 May 2008, 14:03, 11 replies)

My iPod
I feel very embarrassed to admit this. And I know I could buy another iPod easily enough but I kind of depend on it to insulate me from all the chattering masses on the train (see last week's rant).

Besides it's got all my really groovy 80's music and show tunes on it that made me the man I am today.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Fri 9 May 2008, 13:52, 1 reply)

I would save all the cake
Because it's my b3taday tomorrow, and I won't be here, so on second thoughts I'm going to take all the cake now, just in case b3ta burns down while I'm not here.

so there.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Fri 9 May 2008, 13:43, 13 replies)

Original Dali
I have an original Dali. Its a cheque, written by him in 1978. I stole it from a restaurant in Spain, somewhere in Catalina.

He lived in the area and frequented the local hostelries in the area. He notoriously paid for a lot of things - including meals - with a cheque. Always signed with a flourish, and a tiny little sketch. He knew full well that no one would ever cash those cheques. A lot of places that recieved these cheques put them up on the wall in frames - or in this case, in a small plastic folder next to the till.

No-one saw me take it 18 years ago. It is well hidden, in storage and not in the house. One day I'll sell it.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 9 May 2008, 13:42, 10 replies)

I think it was William Morris who said:
"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Anyway, I heeded his words and got rid of my family.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 9 May 2008, 13:40, 3 replies)

Living in a material world
I’ve been musing a bit on this question. Narrowing it down to material objects, there are probably a few things that I would consider. I have remarkably few photos, the ex Mrs Davros having kept all of our holiday and wedding albums (although I have a feeling she wants to redress that particular balance, given her personal circumstances). So, amongst my accumulated hordes of plentiful (and, in the grand scale of things, ultimately useless) items, here are a few.

1. The Dalek collection, obviously. Whilst it is nowhere near as large as Tourette’s would like to make out, I do possess 5 radio controlled ones, a model made from a kit years ago, a smaller talking variety, an absolutely tiny one (about an inch high), and, of course, the full sized one. However, trying to wrestle a 5’ tall replica from a burning building would probably be beyond the bounds of reason and I’d undoubtedly end up being burned to a crisp. So I reckon I would let them burn, and replace them on the insurance.

2. My CDs. I certainly couldn’t save them all (and I do have a fair few, but not as many as some people on here, I suspect). But, of all of them, it would probably come down to the Depeche Mode singles box sets 1-6, containing pretty much every single, b-side and remix they ever released on single format, whether 7” or 12” vinyl, or CD. Again, the rest can be taken care of via the insurance.

3. DVDs. Again, a fairly extensive collection and it would be difficult to pick. I certainly couldn’t carry them all, and my tastes change according to the mood I’m in. So, another one chalked down to the insurance I think. I could replace my VHS collection in the process as well.

4. My full length leather coat would definitely be saved, as I could wear it and therefore carry something else of sentimental value at the same time. Plus, charging through the flames in a big flappy coat conjures up a certain dynamic, heroic image that I spectacularly fail to live up to in real life. So this could give me a bit of an andrenalin boost! Come to think about it, I’d probably do it in slow motion for added effect (and, more than likely, get burned to a crisp again as a result – not so good).

And so, going on the principle that all of these items could be saved, but equally could be taken care of via the insurance, I am reminded by The Resident Loon of one item I possess that is unique, and that is an original painting I bought in Cannes, circa 1999. I’d gone there for a week with the ex, and we had had probably the most chilled out and relaxing time we’d ever had on holiday. Walking along the seafront one night, I spotted an artist busying away, and saw this painting.

It’s hard to describe – it’s an incredibly simple beach scene, done in acrylics on canvas. The canvas is a flat, piercing blue, with a single raised white and blue line that depicts a wave about to crash on the shore, with a faint white wash on the beach. But I was instantly transfixed by it. He had several variations on this theme, but this one in particular caught my eye, so I bought it. It took pride of place on our wall, framed in a pine frame that had been lime waxed to bring out the grain in the wood. It’s a very serene painting.

When we split up, that was the only possession we had together that I wanted. I got very little else from our home together, but I still have that painting. When I moved into my bachelor pad, I sought out the right colour blue for my bedroom so it would match the painting. Now it hangs against a chocolate brown coloured wall in our bedroom, and it still looks good.

So yes, out of my material possessions, that painting would be saved. And, I could protect it from the flames using my leather coat. Sorted!
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 9 May 2008, 13:37, 33 replies)

Asymmetrical warfare on! Or, "The haves have it."
This post looks like one of the more unusual battles I've lurked about here over the years.

In the red corner, those who in the main are happy to accept their status as people who define themselves / see themselves as defined by the stuff they surround themselves with (I'm not being disparaging, mind).
In the blue corner, those leaning away from ownership as a concept. Very much purple myself, and sort of shimmery to behold as I waver backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

Now there are those who feel all blue-cornery and talk about how they are increasingly defined not by what they own but by what they do. Which is lovely. Except that when you really look at it, what this group of blue-corner leaners aren't getting past is that they're simply replacing a material thing with a conceptual thing - a demonstrable thing whereby they can continue to see themselves reflected in the eyes of others - and thus continue to "know" that they exist. It's not a sustainable spot for a seeker to stand; it's just a spot along the way sometimes. But if we (there; caught me out, I admitted it) keep leaning bluewards, we eventually must come to a point of choice:
Accept that we need to consciously define ourselves by use of things or deeds or demonstrable traits that we can reliably believe a "reasonable third party" will take as a signifier of human familial worthiness, OR take the gamble that we might end up a mad rambling bag lady in the letting-go-ness. Or become enlightened. Not to say one isn't necessarily the other also.

My point is, that in this post, the blue-corner-wannabes like me will have our philosophical space to speak, and hope to inspire our ruddier brethren to take a step in the cooler-coloured direction (because trying to convince or inspire others to communicate supports our sense of being real), but in the end the materialists will win any such battle. Because the rest of us just hope to care less about who posts first, posts last, gets more clicks, makes more friends here, and so on. It is fun to watch though, isn't it?

Now I'm not sure whether I want you to click or not.....oh go on; go ahead - make my reality. I can always give them away later ;-)

Rant done, thanks.
(dadadali has hybrid vigour, Fri 9 May 2008, 13:32, 6 replies)

last year of school
I went on a date with Moira Richardson and we spent the whole evening kissing with tongue outside the dentist's. She gave me a Human League sticker and I slept with it in my palm all night thinking about her.

I moved away after school, but I still kept a memento of that romantic evening. Not the sticker, which I lost, but Moira. She's chained up in my cellar as I write.
(frankspencer, Fri 9 May 2008, 13:15, 1 reply)

My fat pants...
Must....not...get..fat....again.... *looks at pants, looks at 2nd cream cake*
( girlinthehole, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:54, 6 replies)

Two hands
In one hand my Martin and in the other my Gibson. I just hope the wife gets out okay on her own.
( g_j_p, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:42, 2 replies)

Ted.
I'm a 26 year old man who hasn't had a cuddly toy since he was a toddler, but I love Ted.

Ted's just one of those grey, tatty-teddies you get in any old card shop, he holds a big red loveheart, and there's nothing special about him. In fact, previous girlfriends have given me similar teddies, but they either kept them, or I gave them to my daughter.

The reason I love Ted? Mrs Monkeysex and I live around 100 miles apart, she gave Ted to me on Valentine's day last year, and she had covered him liberally with her lovely, lovely perfume.
He sits on my bed, right next to my pillow, and every time I wake up or go to sleep, I smell Mrs Monkeysex and I'm reminded of what a wonderful person she is.

I don't cuddle him, or hold him or anything, sure, Mrs Monkeysex might have only given him to me to mark her territory, and there is one slight problem. The smell of Mrs Monkeysex's perfume sometimes arouses me, and I'll find myself giving him some very funny looks.
I'm sorry Ted, but one of these days I'm going to take my sexual frustrations about being in a long-distance relationship out on you. you're going to get it, hard.

Besides, I'd have to save him from a fire anyway, he's highly flammable.
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:39, 2 replies)

I survived a house fire, actually
It was back in 1986 when I was living with my granddad. We woke to the smell of smoke and the sharp crack of burning timber, and it was immediately obvious that we had to save granddads priceless collection of fire extinguishers, sand buckets and hoses.

We drenched our clothes in water to protect us from the flames and we took it in turns to rush through the conflagration with fire extinguishers under each arm. He had the whole lot: foam, gas, powder... we could have put out an oil refinery fire with that lot. Then there were the buckets of sand, collected over a lifetime from hotels and public buildings - 149 of those we carried through the fire to safety in the back garden.

Long story short, we saved the whole collection. The house was a heap of cinders by the end, and granddad died of smoke inhalation and third-degree burns, but his collection can be seen today at the Hull Museum of Extinguishers.
(frankspencer, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:39, 2 replies)

Boringly
my laptop - I've been travelling around the world for ages now, and my laptop is my stereo, music collection, photo album, phone, TV, DVD player, internet...it's basically everything I need to continue functioning as a normal person.

Failing that, the bag of weed I've got stashed, so at least I can get stoned while I watch the place burn...
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:33, Reply)

Venetian blinds
Venetian blinds are so simple, yet so clever - those little slats that gather dust and block the sun, permitting the light to be angled round your room. Venetian blinds were patented by Edward Beran in London on 11th December 1769. Can you imagine what life was like before that?

If there was a fire, we should save the venetian blinds, otherwise it'd be curtains for us all.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:22, 13 replies)

Grandads Binoculars
My sadly missed grandad (mums dad) had fuck all when he died due to my nan be a theiving bitch in a messy divorce. He fought in WW2 and had a few treasures left over from that period but it was his binoculars i was always fasinated with when i was younger. He told me that they were his fathers that he had used in WW1 and i have heard many countless stories about there life saving abilities. He obviously knew that i was his only relative who actually gave a shit about his war mongering exploits.

But when i was 18 he also told me that he used to spy on his next door neibourghs wife with them while she was sunbathing (the same niebourgh he grassed up for being a dole cheat), genius. so when he passes away i was bequieved the binoculars in his will and i have duley carried on the tradition of spying on my next door neibourghs daughter. god bless you grandad.

lenght, i'm not fucking saying sorry
(CaptainCuntyBollocks the man who can with a frying pan full of lamb, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:22, Reply)

"If you own more than seven items
"then the items own you." - Chinese proverb
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:20, 7 replies)

To lighten the mood somewhat
If only for myself...

I know how that fire would have been started....by my twin sons.

I've written previously about how they set the chimney alight when just toddlers - 999, Firebrigade, flames shooting out the top of the chimney.

However, I have an update on my little Firestarters....

A recent update actually...Wednesday to be precise.

I discovered the shower curtain had a hole in it - the sort of hole caused by a match flame.

Then I found an empty aerosol can with a 2" blackened circle on one side.

The sort of blackened circle that only a naked flame can cause.

Yes, my sons have discovered how to make homemade flame-throwers.

Be rest assured that we have had The Talk about the danger of aerosols, flame-throwers, matches and the wrath of their mother.

But if there are any house fires in the South East of the UK it's probably going to involve my experimental offspring.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:17, 15 replies)

Sadly
the thing that means more to me than almost anything in the world is a bit intangible. It's the fact that Orson Welles once asked my mum out and she told him to sling his hook.
(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Fri 9 May 2008, 12:10, 1 reply)

Musing...
This question has got me thinking about Michael Landy’s “Breakdown” and the question of how much we need things. “Breakdown” was something that I found very powerful, very moving and, in the end, very scary. Why? Because the idea of demolishing your past life seems to be close to the idea of demolishing yourself. Yet the scariness of such a move is something I find giddyingly inspiring: the idea of having the guts to put all your possessions through a shredder, given the risk that that amounts to putting yourself through a shredder is one that leaves me awestruck. I’d be lovely to think that I was that brave.

I’ve been musing for a while on the notion of stripping away from a person – maybe myself, maybe someone else - all that could be stripped away, and seeing whether anything would be left, or whether you would thereby “abolish” them (and, conversely, what would be left after a biographical life had been removed from a merely biological one). It’s unlikely that simply removing anyone’s possessions would be sufficient to achieve this, but it might be an interesting first move.


Volunteers?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:10, 16 replies)

My pants.
I don't know how I'd cope if my pants were on fire*.




_*lies
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:06, 4 replies)

Unrequited love
The only thing I really recall is a picture of a friend who showed me great kindness (like actually speaking to me and getting to know me).

I loved her so.

I knew she would never feel that way about me and in the end I accepted that.

She moved to Spain after several years (being half Spanish) where she was happier. After a year or so she was killed in a car accident.

She chokes me up to think of her now. I used to have terrible dreams where I could see her but she never saw me.

Then I had a dream where she did at last see me and talk to me. That did help. I don't dream of her anymore which if I admit is probably the best for me.
(Fluke feels bitter as well as thick, Fri 9 May 2008, 12:04, Reply)

A bit materialistic...
But my leather jacket.

Found it in a charity shop when I was at uni. Really hard-up for cash, (Surrey doesn't have affordable student accomodation, and I was self-funding uni) and it was £6. I decided to get it, as I was sick of being soaked every time it rained, and getting cold at night.

That £6 was my shopping for the week, but I'm so glad I got it, worn it pretty much every day that it's not been too hot since then.

It's perfectly worn-in, but the lining is starting to come away, so need to think about getting that fixed.

Not actually at all interesting, now I posted it...
( Cawl, Fri 9 May 2008, 11:57, Reply)

apart from rescuing a fire extinguisher to put
the bloody thing out in the first place?

I would rescue nada, zip, not a sausage

after a decade of accumulating souvenirs from travelling and general kipple, I've had a slow process of slowly getting rid of all of it, even my house (sold pre empting the crash), and all my possessions - which have either gone on ebay or have been given away to friends and family - even sentimental items from travelling are not worth keeping if you put them in the proper context of what's really important in life

the remainder I'm left with are of purely practical use such as a few legal reference books for courses, and the art stuff will go soon - the idea is to be left with what only could fit in a good sized suitcase - which was the idea, as I'm in the process of buying land abroad with self built bore hole for water in our quest to get off the grid

the only artwork I haven't given away is a pastel (the horse jumper pic in my profile) because it needs a special glass frame to protect it - so if anyone wants it, drop me a private message. all I ask is you just paypal me the postage (about £3 ) and to make a donation of what ever you think fit to the web address in my signature
(The Goat www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com, Fri 9 May 2008, 11:55, 13 replies)

Boo-Boo
Boo-Boo is my extremely tatty-looking, oft-mended teddy bear. Not sure exactly when I got him, but I must have only been a couple of months old when I did.
I don't know why he's named Boo-Boo, but he kind of looks like Yogi Bear's friend of the same name, so that's the story I'm sticking with.
Every time I move house, he 'lives' with me (although, usually stuffed in the corner of some armchair). I'd definitely take him out in the case of fire.

Also, my nana's wedding ring. I found it in her sewing tin when I was about 9, and she said I could keep it.
I hang onto it more as a memento of my Pop, who was pretty cool, and taught me how to fish and play poker, and sung songs in an Irish accent when he was sozzled (most of the time).
Not actually sure if I have it here or back in Oz, but I'd grab that and the set of my great-grandma's rosary beads.
(Celerydemon, Fri 9 May 2008, 11:38, Reply)