Phillumeny

A VERY FRUSTRATING day. The garage next door were unable to look at my car yesterday but said they would try to look at it today. Went round just after 9am with the key and did the bloomin' car move from it's parking spot outside at all during the following hours? No it flamin' well did not. I am meant to be driving to Inverness on Sunday, as well as having things to do tomorrow that a car is needed for really. If I had known that they wouldn't get round to my car today I would have chanced driving it and gone elsewhere to get it sorted - TODAY. By 2pm I was now kind of anticipating that my car might not be taken in for examination so I actually phoned a garage six miles away and asked if they could look at it tomorrow. Sort of complicates tomorrow's plans a bit but I suppose it could be worse. I'm still going to get to do what I wanted - one way or another.

I had intended to spend the day at home today anyway, so not having a car didn't bother me (though that did make it all the more annoying that the car didn't get fixed today). My plan was to spend the day cleaning the house but although I was up early I found myself waylaid this morning by unexpectedly tidying out two trunks that were in Ken's shed. I had been looking at the jumble of dirty walking boots and shoes that lay in one corner of the conservatory and thought that if we had a trunk or chest to put them in it would make the place so much neater and tidier.

"Do we not have a chest somewhere?" I voiced out loud. Next thing I knew was that Ken was heaving in a trunk from his shed: "This is full of old clothes of yours" he said. This was shortly followed by another chest being dumped unceremoniously down. I heard a clash of ceramic from within as this one was dropped, so I started sorting out this one first as I know from experience that I find it difficult to deal with old clothes - so many memories! The chest was full of memories too though:

Pottery (thankfully unscathed after the chest's clumsy deposit) from Japan

Half a dozen windchimes

A collar belonging to my beautiful cat Blakey, who was killed by a car in 1994, and was only just past her first birthday.

A little box containing my Girl Guide patrol badge and my Prefect's badge (which got me a part-time job when the male chauvinist interviewing me one lunchtime when I was in sixth year looked at it and said "What does that say? Perfect?" and I, without thinking, sarcastically answered "No, it says Pervert". He chortled and announced immediately that I had the job)

An empty contact lens case that I had asked a lover to put some drops of his aftershave in so that I could sniff it to remind me of him when we were apart. That was back in the mid 90's and though the aftershave has long since evaporated, today when I sniffed it, the case still smelt of Calvin Klein's "Escape".

As I worked my way through these objects it dawned on me that nobody else in the world knew the stories and backgrounds to all of these items apart from me.

Then, I opened one tin and found inside ... my matchbox collection! I had completely forgotten I had this. When I was a smoker, in the late 80's and into the mid 90's, I collected what I perceived to be interesting matchboxes, mainly from places that I had visited in that time. The Buck Inn, N. Yorks was the start of the collection - coming from a University field trip in 1987. I think the last was possibly the Grand Yavuz Hotel in Istanbul where I stayed with my then husband in 1996. All the others came from my life between these dates, trips to France, dinner at the Ubiquitous Chip on the 9th October 1993 (the day after my wedding), a visit to the Tropical Bird and Butterfly Gardens in Padstow which would have been in 1990 (had to laugh at this one really as I presumably must have bought the matches in the gift shop? Can't imagine that gift shops in tourist attractions would sell boxes of matches advertising themselves these days? Though to be fair, I wouldn't really know as I don't smoke any more so never buy matches).

Anyway, I am blethering on too much so ought to stop. The fact that I once had a matchbox collection made me chuckle though, so I have decided to make it my blip for today. And "Phillumeny" is apparently the proper name for matchbox collecting!

In the end, half the house got cleaned - the top floor only, though actually I did manage to do the stairwell and the ground floor hall too. No idea when I am going to finish the remaining rooms - busy schedule now until I go back to work on the 15th. However, if I don't get my car back tomorrow , I will have to cancel my trip north and I suppose, for want of anything else to do as I'll be trapped in the house, I could complete the domestic drudgery then!