And Brains!

I am a cheap date - when it comes to jewellery that is. (Don’t even THINK of scrimping on the seafood!) In these breakfast cereal days of credit crunches and fresh financial squeezes this is probably no bad thing. I have never been particularly interested in the glister of gold or the slicing, sparkle of diamonds. And anyway I always lose stuff or give it away. If a friend notices something I am wearing that they think is pretty I have no compunction in handing it over. Its only stuff after all, (that is as long as it isn’t my debit card… or my fillings…...)
Having said that, I do get surprisingly attached to strange bits and pieces of junk. I have this pair of £3 sparkly blue butterfly earrings that I bought at a supermarket. They have been to several continents and spent hundreds of nights under hundreds of pillows or on hundreds of dressers over the years. And then, in Toronto last May, I lost one.
Photo: Adonis Blue Butterfly; Johnathon Stott (c)www.jstottphotography.com
I searched everywhere, stripped the bed back, went inch by inch over the floor with my magnifier, shut my eyes turned around and opened them again..but it was still missing.

Every now and then back in UK I would think about it with sadness....my cheap little blue butterfly stud. The other, the-one-that-was-left, would glint at me from my jewellery box forlornly. ‘Its just a trinket.’ I thought. ‘What’s the problem?’

Months went by.

And then yesterday I went to pull out a pair for the day and there, entwined in each other, were two blue butterfly earrings. How magical and intriguing is that my friends? Magical, mysterious and strangely very uplifting! A blessing.

To celebrate and because I was feeling lovely, I donned the sharp, black T-shirt my nephew sent me a few years ago which has rarely made an outing. Emblazoned in white across the breasts it reads ‘ALL THIS!’ and underneath in tiny brackets it adds (and brains). It makes everyone grin and my posture gets stonkingly good. Boobs out, head high. That was until I suddenly thought,
‘Oh hell. ‘…what happens if people test me?’
It is hard to keep pert with visions of people running behind one shouting ‘And brains eh? Really? What’s the square root of 5689 then? What’s the capital of Djibouti? What are the rules of probate?’ Ideally people would be too busy looking at my breasts...but that rather defeats the marvellous double edged irony of the T-shirt.
Ah well..All This, my blue butterfly earrings and at the very least, half a brain then.