Possessions

At Thinking Digital this week I had the opportunity to listen to a talk by Richard Banks, Interaction Designer at Microsoft Research entitled ‘The Future of Looking Back’ an interesting reflection on how digital media will change the memories and possessions that we pass on to our children when we are no longer around.  In the future it won’t be a shoebox of photos that we leave in the bottom of our wardrobe but rather a hundred thousand different files and folders to look through in digital media, just in case there is something of value in there.

But his talk also touched on the physical possessions, not just the digital and the things people keep that they really value.  Richard described how a friend of his had kept a small plastic gear wheel from a motorbike, which had catastrophically failed, as a memento.  It was then that my mind wandered to the things that I most value and keep, not friends or family but small objects and keepsakes.  The key to unlocking my thoughts was the gearwheel which reminded me of the aluminium inlet pipe from my first motorbike, a Norton Jubilee 250 twin.  It is a small trumpet shaped object less than ten centimetres long and I keep it at work in a desk draw.  My Norton had suffered the indignity of several catastrophic failures, indeed I never went more than thirty seven miles without breaking down but it sill holds a special place in my life’s story, perhaps because it was how I used to get to my girlfriends house, or rather try to get.

What else have I kept?  Some very sentimental ones, the hat my father wore when we walked the Yorkshire three peaks at least some thirty years ago.  He had sown on a badge that you can buy to show that you have done the walk.  I also have a small clay pot and a wood, nail and wool creation that my daughters had made when they were in primary school.  Then there are a sixpence piece, a metro ticket from our honeymoon and a blue vase with a cow motif that I bought at a fair at Melrose station in the mid-eighties.  I also have a corrosion assessment hammer for MOT tests which I used to present in my successful bid to become the Young Stationer of the Year to show how legislation can change markets very quickly and my first Psion hand held computer with the plastic shielding to protect the key board, which made a satisfying pop when pulled apart quickly.  Finally there is the gold plated pocket watch that belonged to my maternal grandfather that I have had mended several times but still doesn’t work, perhaps it has stopped short.

That’s it I think, an eclectic collection of items filled with memories and only related to each other by their association to me.  But why these things, why have I picked them out of the hundreds of other items that I have bought, inherited or received as gifts?  Of all the things that I have in my possession, why is it these that I regard as having sufficient or significant value to be considered notable possessions?  I don’t have an answer to these questions.  There is no formula to define what we value and what we don’t, no algorithm to work out which things we will keep and which we will throw away.  What I do know though is that when I do die these items will most likely be discarded with me and my children will keep their own memories of who I was and their own treasured possessions.