Lost & Found

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Who'da thought it? For some years now, I've been trying to work out just what had happened to my old slide-rule (pictured), which I knew to be somewhere in the house, as I've taken that, alongside my tee-square, with me, wherever I've moved. The tee-square, which I think I've mentioned before, was given to me by my mother's employer when I passed my eleven-plus and was due to go to technical school at age eleven. The slide rule was bought for me by my parents while there. Both are kind of talismanic for me, I guess. Anyway, in preparation for tomorrow's blitz on the wood stove installation, I've been clearing the loft of rubbish and ossified rat-shit; a not entirely pleasant task, but there you go: some stuff just needs to get done.

Having rescued a couple of lovely old valve radios that my dad gave me, our old dart-board (late of the Bull Inn, Bethesda), and sundry other bits and pieces, such as my first ever mobile phone (NEC P3 - a bit of a walkie-talkie sized artefact), I came across a cardboard fruit tray of - mostly old bank statements - which also happened to hold a completely random selection of my history. Alongside the phone(s), slide-rule, dominoes and dice, was my original, wooden, descant recorder from junior school, which I'd thought was lost to time. What this all means to anyone but me is anyone's guess, but I'm glad to have found that which I had thought gone for good...

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