Hide & Seek

Hide & Seek

As an older person I might be inclined to accept that losing things is a product of the ageing process that affects most senior citizens.  The term ‘absent minded’ is a common phrase that spans not only the older generation, but anyone who has an overloaded brain that struggles to juggle and frequently drops things that become long forgotten.

Sure, it has accelerated for me.  Short term memory is gradually becoming an issue, but I’ve learnt to place simple markers or reminders that are clear and point to the intended task or object.  Yet as I write this my thoughts are taken back to the late summer of 1977 and the misplacing of that classic object; the wallet!

My wife to be had just gone back to college.  I was living alone in the new home we had been fortunate enough to purchase not weeks before as we prepared it for our wedding the following summer.  I worked on the railway then and supplemented my earnings by doing overtime on the various weekend engineering projects in the area.

I often worked from late Saturday until mid-morning as part of a team that built and maintained the track and all its infrastructure.  The morning in question saw me on a length of track between Northenden and Cheadle Junction, South West Manchester.  The night had been hard work, but the warm summer night made for pleasant working conditions.  When we ‘knocked off’  I only had a mile or so to stroll home.  When I did so I remembered to reach for my wallet, which was missing…

I searched the house and various pockets, but to no avail. I decided I had lost it on the mile and a half length of track I had been working on.  So I went to the site and having gained permission from the duty Signalman, walked up and down squinting in the ever increasing glare of a bright sunny morning – again to no avail.

I returned somewhat depressed to the house.  I decided to open the curtains in the spare bedroom…Yes, there sat my wallet.  As a game of hide and seek the wallet had won hands down.  I was 22 years old then and it was a bit too early to blame age.  It is an ever-increasing multitude of items that have joined that wallet in the lost and found, but this simple plastic wallet with a modest amount of cash will always sit on that long ago window sill.