Other Presents

The present of a door made me think back to appreciate other presents I have known. I have a very wee, bone china trinket box with pink roses which a lovely friend surprised me with in the days of Mugwump and chunky pottery and pendants. I have a very wee black and gold enamel box which my wee brother brought me back from his school trip to Germany. My wee brother and I are eight years apart and after I had to give up attempting to bring him up as my own when I realised that the age gap meant that we wouldn't overlap at primary or post primary level. By the time he went on that school trip aged fourteen, I honestly thought he didn't know I existed, but it turns out he did. I have a silver brooch outlining the skyline of the Mournes from someone who didn't need to give me a present at all. I have a collection of sparkly costume jewellery given to me over the years by a friend at the time of the annual school formal. She was always attempting to sparkly me up a bit for the occasion, and I did obediently wear the sparkles. My bestest friend at school was a particularly wonderful present giver, and I have them all. I have all the stuffed toys she was able to give me because her daddy worked for Triang. There's a particularly fetching cuddly vulture. Then there is a collection of tiny drinking glasses she bought for me over the years in Wellworths. There's a tiny port glass, a whiskey glass, a shot glass and one for swirling red wine, or maybe brandy. A very recent, very local present has been some Wee Felt Fiddler sheep! There are household items that live forever because of the people who gave them to me. A bunch of Collegiate students gave me Christmas present in a wastepaper bin. I ate all the presents, but the bin and the fake milk carton the moos live on. My tea caddy was an unlikely present from a schoolfriend long since disappeared into Montana. There are two gloriously enormous long stemmed wine glasses which came with wine, now long since drunk, from the parent of a student whose success had seemed unlikely. I have another wastepaper basket which a friend's mother bought me on a whim at a stall at Glasson Pier, where I saw the old Heysham ferry moored up. My very unsentimental mother gave me a wonderful and satisfyingly heavy but delicate gold chain for my twenty first birthday - and of course there is the Psalter I requested as a present after O Levels. I tried to explain metrical psalms to a musical friend just yesterday, so I'm going to show her the Psalter today to demonstrate the half page method. Mostly in this old house I am surrounded by the belongings of dead relatives whose houses I have cleared because I am the only one left on this island, but in among them are my presents.