The Wallet

I was given this leather wallet by my Uncle Sandy, my mother's brother, on my 21st birthday and I have used it ever since. It's looking a bit worn now, after over fifty years' use, but it has done me extremely well, which isn't surprising as my uncle's gifts were always very good - this wallet comes from Harrods and the gold clips round the edge are real gold.

In it I have kept some precious and some rather odd things, the former including a 3cm x 3cm photo of Gill which was part of a Polyphoto sequence her parents had taken. I'm pleased to say that she still has the pendant.

There's also a small envelope which comes from a jeweller in Cheltenham. It's the envelope in which I bought Gill's engagement ring. In those days one didn't seem to pop the question in exotic places or ways but, having agreed to marry, we went out together and chose a ring. Its main stone is a small but very pretty blue sapphire.

Then I have a cutting, I think from the 'Daily Telegraph', announcing our wedding. If my memory serves me, my parents insisted on this being done as a way of informing their scattered friends of the happy event.

In the jeweller's envelope is a silver-coloured thrupenny coin which dates back to our days in Rhodesia between 1967 and 1970, though the coin itself dates back further to the colony of Southern Rhodesia. I have no idea why I kept it.

Then there's a small piece of brown paper covered in sellotape which holds a four-leaf clover. I can't remember where I found it but at least I know why it's there - to bring good luck.

Lastly, there's a cutting from a local paper in Ludlow with a picture showing one of my Ludlow Grammar School A level students, David Webster, who found a most unusual fossil which went by the name of Osculocystis monobrachiolata. Again, why this should be in my wallet is a mystery.

Until recently, the wallet also held a small, red lucky bean which I bought from a curio shop in Mombasa. It was less than a centimetre across but it had been hollowed out and contained five tiny elephants carved out of ivory. It has gone, not because of the current revulsion against ivory, nor because the small African children who carved the elephants often lost their sight, but, sadly, because its contents had grown mouldy.