Tag: finding lost things

Friend thrown a life jacket

Stefan’s expensive work jacket was accidentally sold at the school fair

Last year I wrote several columns about things people had lost, things they had found, and about St Anthony to whom the faithful pray if they need help finding a misplaced item.

That subject cropped up again recently when I was on a ramble with my friend Jane and she told me a couple of remarkable stories that I felt I had to share.

Jane and her neighbour Aisling get on with each other very well, attend each other’s parties, exchange birthday gifts and such like. They also swap items of clothing, if they find they are not wearing something but think the other might like it. One such item was a jacket that Aisling gave to Jane several years ago. Although Jane liked the jacket and placed it in her wardrobe, it stayed there unworn for a long time. Finally, a few weeks ago while planning for a night out, Jane remembered the jacket and thought it would go very well with what she wanted to wear. She dug it out and tried it on to see if it suited. Instinctively she put her hands in the pockets and to her surprise, found there was something left inside one of them.

Pulling it out, she discovered it was a pair of beautiful diamond earrings. Astounded, she immediately took them round to show Aisling. Her neighbour was also astounded – and delighted. She revealed that they were the pair of very expensive earrings she had worn on her wedding day and which had been lost for at least 10 years.

Aisling and her family used to live in Singapore, and while there, they employed a cleaner. She explained to Jane that after a while, they began to suspect the cleaner of pilfering things. They had no evidence to prove it, but to be on the safe side Aisling began to hide her most precious pieces of jewellery in the pockets of the clothes hanging in her wardrobe. The problem was, over time she forgot what she had put where, and by the time they moved back to England a few years later, she had completely forgotten that she had hidden her wedding earrings in a jacket pocket. For more than 10 years, she had lived in the belief that her treasured earrings had been taken by the cleaner and that she would never see them again (to be fair, the cleaner had almost certainly stolen other items, so it was not an unreasonable assumption to make). To get them back after so long was an absolute and unexpected joy.

A similar story involved Jane’s husband Stefan. Jane’s and my own children went to the same primary school which held regular fairs and jumble sales. These occasions were good excuses to declutter our wardrobes and pass on any unwanted toys and bric-a-brac.

One year as one such fair was approaching, Jane had a good declutter and filled up the car with jumble, putting a pile of unwanted coats on the back seat before dropping them off at school.

A few days later, her husband was preparing to leave for a business meeting, and asked if she had seen his smart jacket.

“Where did you last have it?’ asked Jane

“I left it on the back seat of the car.”

You can imagine Stefan’s choice response when he discovered that his expensive tailored jacket had been sold for a song at the school fair. Jane had unknowingly scooped it up with the other coats on the back seat and handed it over with the rest of the jumble. They both assumed Stefan would never see his jacket again, and Jane was banished to the dog house.

But the story does not end there. Later that week, tempers having cooled, the couple were out for a walk when they noticed a stranger walking towards them. He was wearing a very familiar item of clothing.

Stefan, being a lot braver than I would have been, stopped the man and asked about the fine jacket he was wearing. The man confirmed he had picked it up from the local school fair for 50p.

With a bit of astute negotiating, and offers of giving the man back the 50p, Stefan and his jacket were happily reunited.

Do you have any stories of unexpected reunions?

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 28th Feb and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 26th Feb 2025

Running round in rings

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Have you ever lost a precious ring? And did you find it again?

I’ve had some interesting comments about wedding rings. Janet Pearce, who used to be a theatre nurse, informed me of something I did not know: “A wedding ring is the only piece of jewellery that you can keep on when you have a general anaesthetic…Also the surgeon and operating team can keep theirs on.”

That surprised me because I would have expected in our super hygiene and infection-conscious world that all jewellery would have to be removed. But Janet pointed out that a patient doesn’t need to be sterile and the wedding band is taped over to stop the heat from any cauterisation burning them. “When the surgeon and scrub nurses scrub up they do a very rigorous hand clean, moving the ring about, and they wear gloves, so no risk of infection.” She added: “I have never removed mine since my late husband placed it there and never will.”

After Henry VIII’s Reformation it was decreed in England that wedding rings must be worn on the third finger of the left hand. If you were found to be wearing one on the right, as had been the custom before (and still was in many European countries), then you were at risk of being declared a Catholic and executed.

Lucien Smith said: “Fascinating about the rings. I was well aware that certain countries favour wearing a ring on the right…but not that it was a religious identifier…We had our rings made in Brighton, but as my husband-to-be took a strong disliking to the lady in the shop (he still won’t tell me why!) I don’t attach any real romance to them. Which is just as well, as we have each lost our rings for either 10 mins in a nightclub bathroom (me!), or a number of weeks in a drawer (him!).”

The tradition of wearing wedding bands dates back to Egyptian times and it used to be thought that there was a specific vein known as the ‘vena amoris’ that passed from the third finger of the right hand straight to the heart, and therefore should be the one that bore the ring. But it turns out there is no such vein.

Clare Powell, who suggested the idea for the column, said: “Thank you for the research. I had heard about the link to the heart but always wondered why the Dutch wore theirs on the right hand (years ago I worked with a girl from Amsterdam who did this). Might have known Henry VIII and the Reformation had something to do with it!”

And Caroline Newnham says: “I’ve heard this about the heart connection though as Clare says, most Europeans wear wedding rings on the right so it makes no sense.”

I’d like to know if you have a special story about your wedding ring, or any precious ring. Do your ever take it off? Have you ever lost it? And if so, how did you break the news to your other half?

I hope my mum won’t mind me sharing the following story with you. My dad bought her a beautiful ring set with diamonds and sapphires for Christmas in 2016. We had a wonderful day with the whole family, and as we were clearing up after lunch, my mum came rushing into the kitchen with a very worried look on her face. The ring was no longer on her finger.

While Dad and my sons sat chatting, myself, Mum, sisters, and nieces all surreptitiously tore the house apart looking for the ring. We pulled ripped wrapping paper from bin bags, ferreted down the sides of sofas and chairs, checked beneath carpets, tables and cupboards, looked in bathrooms, bedrooms, and all over the kitchen, all the while trying not to look like we were looking for anything. All seemed lost, until seconds before someone was about to empty it, we realised no-one had checked inside the kitchen bin.

It was stuffed full of the remains of our Christmas dinner and I can’t remember who had the delightful job of searching, but there, nestled amongst the yucky debris, was Mum’s precious ring. I don’t think I have ever seen a look of such relief on anyone’s face as that of my mum when we found it.

And my dad, who had spent a small fortune on it, was never any the wiser.

I’d love to hear from you about your opinions, memories and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch. This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 5th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 3rd June 2024.