ONE BOY & HIS DOG (AND A CAKE TOPPER)...

THE OPTIMIST

One of the items I remember from my childhood right up to my late teens (at least) was a biscuit tin that was kept in a cupboard (or larder) in four of our houses.  I don't recall it ever having biscuits - it was used for storing screws, nails, clips, curtain hoops, and all sorts of odds-and-ends that had no other place for them to go.  One day it just disappeared, though I'd have been unaware of its absence until some time after the fact.  I've thought about it often over the years, and, with the passage of time, slightly misremembered the illustration on the lid.  I recalled it as a TOM SAWYER-type boy (wearing a straw hat) on a raft, with a little Scottie dog, but it was actually a wash-tub, as I discovered when I saw a picture of the tin on PINTEREST recently.  'Twas good to see it again - and in the very same house I was living in when I last laid eyes on it.

In a previous post on my other blog, I showed you a photo of a chalk snowman (or Eskimo) the original of which had been one of our Christmas decorations ever since I'd been a kid.  The first one got damaged at some point, and was relegated to the biscuit tin which, at that time, was stored in our larder.  They may well have been consigned to oblivion on the same day, but I managed to obtain a replacement for 'Chalky' around 30 years ago, and he's adorned the base of the Christmas tree ever since.  I thought I'd show that photo again, and reunite both of them (or their images at least) just for old times' sake.  I guess I'm just a great, big, silly, sentimental old Hector.

Any Criv-ites ever have this tin?  It contained biscuits by McVITIE & PRICE, and was available circa 1960 onwards.  I managed to track one down and bought it, and the first thing I did was place it in a wall cupboard which now occupies the upper space of where the larder once was.  I thought it fitting to put it in pretty much the same spot I'd last seen the original, as it suggested to my mind a continuity and resumption of how things were in the 1970s.  It must be around 40 years since the first tin 'disappeared', yet seeing its replacement banished the passage of time in an instant and immediately returned me to back then, allowing me to indulge in the illusion that I'm 40 years younger than I am.

Sad?  Maybe.  Fulfilling?  Definitely.