I'm sure it's around here somewhere...

When I was 21, a few friends came to stay at my parents' house and we decided to bury a time capsule. I can't remember exactly what went in it, a newspaper, some stamps, coins, and I think we wrote down what we thought we'd be doing in the future. My brother was nearly 5 at the time, and we said that he should dig it up when he was 21. You never think these things will really happen...

My parents are still living in the same place, and we all descended on them for the weekend to celebrate my brother's birthday. We'd planted a tree near the place we buried it, but only a rotten stump had survived. The area was so overgrown, my brother had already made a path through the weeds with a scythe (disturbing a wasps' nest in the process), but we did a bit more clearing and then searched about with the metal detector (it was in an old biscuit tin). Eventually we had to admit defeat, and plan to try again when the foliage has died back. And I'm going to see if any of my friends have photos of the day we buried it, to give us something else to work from.