I don't own a single good piece of jewellery. Not one. In fact at the moment the only jewellery I can find at all are the great big (£2.99) hoops I live in, the blingy ring I bought when I sold my engagement ring, and the vintage necklace with the little girls face on that is my pride and joy....

I buy bracelets and promptly lose them. I weigh down my neck with rows and rows of old and new strings of beads and the day after the jewellery fairy comes and steals them for herself.  (The little minx).  Rings slip right off my fingers, never to be seen again, and sorrowful orphaned earrings give up the ghost and tuck themselves down the back of the sofa forever after...

In my world pretty things just disappear, which is a shame because nothing has provenance like jewellery. Tiny trinkets of the past dull with all our yesterdays. Memories wrapped in silver plate and hope frozen in a band of gold...

So thank goodness for my Mum. Thinking the very same thoughts she turned her house upside down in search of every trinket she has has ever squandered her hard earned pennies on. Turning over every nook and crannie in search of lost earrings and abandoned bracelets. Every set of beads Helen and I have ever left behind, childhood hairslides, teeny tiny rings and watches  no longer working but resplendent with history...
And there it all was. A tangle of memories and jadeite. More diamante than you could shake a stick at and tiny pieces of nothing that had the years vanishing before my eyes...

The silver chain watch with the blue face that is all I remember about her arms as a child.  The carved bakelite green and amber beads that were the first piece of vintage anything  I ever bought. The tiny signet ring her Dad bought her as a child. The aluminium pendant Helen had carved the immortal words "I Love Parents" (all parents apparently!) on to in metalwork class...
All our yesterdays in a box. Precious moments remembering them with her.

Try it.  Root down the back of your sofa.  In every nonsense drawer you own. In all your old handbags.  Re-unite earrings. Find strings of beads  lost forever.  Wrap a little  bit of your mum around your wrist.  Take childhood rings and  thread them onto ribbon to wear around your neck.

Honour these tiny bits of momentary glamour. Be who you were when you wore them.

Smile. Cry.  And remember...