What item do you wish you had kept?

[Roses]

In the early 60s a plane crashed into one of my father's fields. He and his staff were first on the scene, which was rather gruesome, the pilot and co-pilot were dead, I believe one of them had been decapitated! The passengers were alive, but hurt.

When my sisters and I got home from school we went to have  a look at the scene, which was being guarded by the police, who let us through when we explained the field belong to our father! Even more incredible they allowed us each to take a piece of wreckage as a souvenir!

We brought it home and placed it in our large toy cupboard in our breakfast room, in which we had a shelf each. Some years later my mother had the breakfast room remodelled our toy cupboard, which we had long outgrown was removed. We were not happy girls when we discovered our mother had got rid of our pieces of wreckage without consulting us first! I would have kept mine, a bazaar souvenir to say the least, but it would have been something to show my children and grandchildren.

[SteveH]

How very insensitive and tasteless. I could excuse it in a little girl, but not in an allegedly mature woman.
P.S. - you mean "bizarre".

[Roses]

How very insensitive and tasteless. I could excuse it in a little girl, but not in an allegedly mature woman.
P.S. - you mean "bizarre".

What are you on about?

[SteveH]

What are you on about?

You don't think taking bits of wreckage as souvenirs from a plane crash in which two people died is insensitive and tasteless?

[Roses]

You don't think taking bits of wreckage as souvenirs from a plane crash in which two people died is insensitive and tasteless?

No.

[SteveH]

I think you'll find many people do.

[Rhiannon]

You wouldn't take it from a car crash. Don't see the difference. Although I do get that people keep pieces of WW2 planes when they are found.

[Maeght]

I think you'll find many people do.

Yes, I would.

In my family home we once found some letters and papers suggesting a secret love affair and a possible elopement to Australia involving the daughter of the house. These came from the 1920s and were a fascinating (because they mentioned local and world events of the time) but sad read as it seemed that not all the letters were reaching their intended target. I was only young when they were found and have no idea what happened to them, nor whether the elopement happened.

[Roses]

You wouldn't take it from a car crash. Don't see the difference. Although I do get that people keep pieces of WW2 planes when they are found.

No I wouldn't take anything from a car crash, what would be the point?

Having a plane crash on your property isn't exactly commonplace, and the fact that we as kids were actually permitted to take some of the wreckage home with us was so unusual and weird, it would have been worth holding onto.

[Nearly Sane]

To answer the question in the OP, my art teacher when I was 12, once did a lightning line drawing of Michelangelo and gave it to me. Sometime. somehow. over the years, it disappeared.

[SteveH]

No I wouldn't take anything from a car crash, what would be the point?

Having a plane crash on your property isn't exactly commonplace, and the fact that we as kids were actually permitted to take some of the wreckage home with us was so unusual and weird, it would have been worth holding onto.

For all the glutinously sentimental doggerel you churn out, you can be spectacularly insensitive. It seems you only wouldn't take souvenirs from a car crash because it would be pointless, not because it would be in appallingly bad taste.

[Rhiannon]

Yes, I would.

In my family home we once found some letters and papers suggesting a secret love affair and a possible elopement to Australia involving the daughter of the house. These came from the 1920s and were a fascinating (because they mentioned local and world events of the time) but sad read as it seemed that not all the letters were reaching their intended target. I was only young when they were found and have no idea what happened to them, nor whether the elopement happened.

My family found letters from a cousin of my grandmother, who was disabled, to a much older man who had fallen in love with her. He wanted to marry her but she refused on the grounds of the age gap. Although my family read the letters and said how beautiful they were, I could never bring myself to - they weren't meant for anyone else's eyes and they were of a generation that valued their privacy. I assume that my family kept them but I don't know.

[Roses]

For all the glutinously sentimental doggerel you churn out, you can be spectacularly insensitive. It seems you only wouldn't take souvenirs from a car crash because it would be pointless, not because it would be in appallingly bad taste.

Well as most of your posts are crazy doggerel it is a case of the kettle calling the pot black.   

[SteveH]

Well as most of your posts are crazy doggerel it is a case of the kettle calling the pot black.   

Do you even know what "doggerel" means?

[Maeght]

My family found letters from a cousin of my grandmother, who was disabled, to a much older man who had fallen in love with her. He wanted to marry her but she refused on the grounds of the age gap. Although my family read the letters and said how beautiful they were, I could never bring myself to - they weren't meant for anyone else's eyes and they were of a generation that valued their privacy. I assume that my family kept them but I don't know.

Yes, I take the point about the privacy issue. I don't think we ever sat and read through them all but when first found took a look at a few things to see what they were and got the jist. There were timetables for the P&O trips to Australia and stuff like that I would have liked to have kept and the letters would have been good to preserve but not put on show if you know what I mean. I now have an interest in my local history and I think the references to the local events would have been interesting and of worth more than the personal, private, story.

[Rhiannon]

Yes, I take the point about the privacy issue. I don't think we ever sat and read through them all but when first found took a look at a few things to see what they were and got the jist. There were timetables for the P&O trips to Australia and stuff like that I would have liked to have kept and the letters would have been good to preserve but not put on show if you know what I mean. I now have an interest in my local history and I think the references to the local events would have been interesting and of worth more than the personal, private, story.

I think that for me a big reason was that I knew one of the people involved, and I knew how dignified and private she was - if she'd wanted us to know about him, she'd have told the family. Maybe it is different when it isn't someone you know. Letters are such important sources for social history, I agree. I do hope that my family letters still exist; maybe one day when I am old I will finally take a look.

[Roses]

I threw out all the letters my husband sent me during the four years prior to our wedding, as I am not sentimental about that sort of thing. However, I am kicking myself for not keeping the one he sent me when he was 19, it was the love letter to beat all love letters. For the first time he experienced bleeding haemorrhoids, which he has been a martyr to since then. The letter gave me the full details of his condition in glorious technicolour.    Looking back on it makes me giggle, and I often tease him about it, he can't see what the problem is, which is typical of him. 

[Robbie]

I can't think of anything I wish I had kept, at least not desperately wished.

As Rhi said people used to keep 'souvenirs' from WW2, my parents knew people who had kept quite bizarre stuff but that seemed to be the norm for that time. Goodness knows what their kids did with them, probably chucked them out.

It does seem odd to take a souvenir from a plane crash in which people died but LR was a child then & now remembers it in the way it was taken.

(Congenital Harry, pick on someone your own size & I do know what doggerel means - funny verse.)

[SteveH]

It can mean that, but it is usually used nowadays to mean bad verse. William McGonnagall wrote reams of it.

[Gordon]

In 1977 I was playing the pub-rock 'scene' in Glasgow quite regularly and it was a steady source of dosh.

I was persuaded by one of the guys in a well-known but now long-gone guitar shop (McCormack's) in Glasgow to buy an unusual guitar by the US manufacturer Ovation (see pic in link: mine was exactly like this) who were best known for acoustic guitars and not solid-body electrics. It had a very odd shape and had one of the first 'active' tone circuits but it looked strange compared with the Fender and Gibson guitars that were ubiquitous back then. It played well though, and sounded great, but I got fed up with being asked what the hell it was.

One guy I knew liked it and, because it was versatile due to the electronics, offered to buy it for his recording set-up and the last time I saw him a few years ago he still had it. I really wish I'd kept that guitar!

guitar

[Rhiannon]

My first boyfriend gave me a copper cross that had been his grandmother's. I used to wear it on a hoop earring. That'd be nice to have kept.

I also had a 12" of Blue Monday by New Order, only it had been mis-labelled; the B side (an instrumental version called The Beach) had been labelled as the A side and vice versa. Must be worth a mint to a collector. I hope that it'll turn up on one of the boxes of records that came out of my dad's loft but I'm not confident.

[Shaker]

The trophies from all of my victims.

[Roses]

The trophies from all of my victims.

Please elaborate.

[Enki]

I once had a complete copy of the Daily Mirror issued on the day after the Titanic Sank. It listed all the passengers and a large part of the newspaper was devoted to the disaster. It  belonged to my father. Unfortunately I don't have it now.

I had a piece of the aluminium and fabric from the R38 airship disaster of 1921. My father, who was one of the youngsters who witnessed it, kept it. I gave it to my brother in law who was keenly interested in airships. He still has it.


I have a copy of one of the first stereo vinyl LP records ever made, 'Please Please Me', by the Beatles. A friend of mine at that time(he later became one of the Folk Group, the Watersons) gave it to me back in the sixties. It turns out it is the first parlophone pressing from 1963. I've still got that. It will probably end up with one of my two sons, when I die.

[Nearly Sane]

Please elaborate.

In your case, it's a tin ear