More in the box

And it means I've caught up at last. This set of six objects in the type box has another set of stories behind them. Top left is a little visual joke, 'half-croon, tanner', as in 'I stubbed my toe and it's goin' half-croon, tanner'. Seeing the two coins probably makes more sense than hearing the expression, at least for anyone younger than about 45 who doesn't remember old money like half crowns and sixpences (aka tanners). If it's not obvious it describes a throbbing sensation, as if increasing in size from the size of a sixpence to the size of a half crown. Next compartment is simpler - a beech mast picked up and popped in a jacket pocket on a walk in the Lake District during one of L and my many visits there over the years. And completing the top row is a small metal pin badge of Misha, the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The Olympics the USA (and others) boycotted over Afghanistan, which lead to a tit-for-tat Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 LA games. This was from my ex, M, and I'm guessing she brought it back from her time in Moscow as a language student in 1982/83, although it might just have been a souvenir from her trip to St Petersburg in 1993 when she brought back quite a few badges with her. Bottom right is a china doll's head. I found this when I was playing at being an archeologist when I was a kid. (I realise just how much that sentence says about my childhood.) Anyway, I did a bit of digging at the bottom of the garden of our 1960s semi. I guess my parents just humoured me and must have been really surprised when I started making 'finds'. Mostly bits of old glass, but a nearly complete ink well and this doll's head were the prize objects. I presume it was stuff dumped over the fence from the much older house whose garden backed onto ours. Next along is a Dundee City of Discovery badge dating back to L's shortlisting in the first Dundee Book Prize in 1999. We both went to the prize-giving lunch for the shortlisted eighteen books. L's novel, Centrepiece, was included in the de facto short, shortlist, as they read out an excerpt from it, although it didn't win. and finally, one of L's items - a driver's badge from her father's days of taking vintage cars to old car rallies. While a majority of the type box objects are mine - mostly because I seem to have kept more of this sort of ephemera - there are some of L's things in there too.