It is a while since I threw €500 into the rubbish. At the time, I still erred on the side of agnosticism about the powers of St Anthony and felt lucky that my flimsy faith led me to my recycling bin before its imminent collection.
The crisp notes were wrapped inside the opinion pages of this onetime Old Lady of D’Olier Street.
“Phew!,” I said to myself. “That was a close one.”
Of course, it wasn’t the first time – or the last for that matter – that I was guilty of mislaying items of importance in my life. There has been the missing car, the lost wedding ring, my spectacles, fresh ginger for a chana masala, a multitude of berets, my marriage and, of course, my toddler daughter.
Áine Ryan on losing things, from cash and a car, to a child mislaid on a hillside ramble
John Ruskin and the extraordinary relationship with his `muse’: Brian Maye on the young Irish girl who caught the art historian and social reformer’s attention
McGrath hurrah - Frank McNally on the first Kentucky Derby, 150 years ago
Disunited Irishmen - Frank McNally on the year Shankill Road protestants paid tribute in Bodenstown and were attacked by the IRA
The daughter debacle was more of “a left behind” situation. It was on the side of a hill overlooking a cliff out on the island where I lived at the time. She was about 18 months old and loved sitting on her Daddy’s shoulders during these expeditions. So we had brought her with us to gather the sheep.
In a moment of high drama – with sheep baa-ing hysterically and running in every direction – himself dropped her down on the grass so that he could use his full resource of expletives on the dog, Saddam. (Blame Tony Blair, George Bush and certain non-existent weapons of mass destruction.)
When the crisis was finally averted, I scarpered to the house to prepare lunch.
Obviously, when he arrived back into the house a short while later, still flushed and in a ball of sweat, the dog panting, I wondered where our daughter was. He had assumed I’d brought her with me.
It was that slow moment just before your brain tells you to panic.
The two of us were up Coinne Rón like mountain goats shouting her name, hearts thumping. There she was, though, exactly where he’d left her, under a soft hummock, playing with daisies and sheep poo and singing to herself.
While our marriage almost went up on the rocks that day, we survived many more dramas before we weighed anchor. I often wondered was losing my wedding ring while footing turf in the bog an omen of our parting. It is comforting, though, that on some distant day in the future a young archaeologist on a field trip to the island might dig up my ring and write a paper about who I might have been.
Talking about jewellery, back in the day when I was a student in Maynooth, it was trendy to wear earrings that didn’t match.
A handy fashion statement for my stash of solitary hoops, dangles, tassels and clip-ons.
Of course, now that I am much older and a tad more understated about the decoration of my lobes, I don’t feel it is quite as acceptable to give them separate identities, in a nod to their lost partners.
At least in the case of my milliner’s shop of berets, they are easily replaced. At last count, I have 25 – pink and purple, blue and green, black and brown – the majority of which are second and third generation since they seem to vanish in cafes, on buses, trains, planes, hotel lobbies.
On a more serious note, to this day I wish I had held off calling the cops about my car having been stolen from right outside my house in Westport. Well, isn’t it rather humiliating when half way through an interview with a friendly member of the Garda, you have a sudden vision of leaving the same vehicle in a centre town car park two nights earlier before partying until dawn?
All these years later, that same garda smirks at me when I pass him on the street.
I can’t be alone, can I, in regularly leaving a key item of my shopping in either the trolley or at the checkout? It is usually something small like garlic or ginger, an essential ingredient for that dinner you are about to make, after you have hauled the shopping home, put everything away in the presses, pulled out the recipe book and make the discovery.
And let’s not even go there about losing my glasses. I have often torn the house apart in a desperate search for them to discover they are sitting dispassionately on my head, waiting patiently to read that book, check the washing instructions for a new duvet cover, rest on my nose.
Having three pairs of glasses doesn’t help, I suppose. I have inadvertently worn my prescription sunglasses on the treadmill in the gym. Well, you wouldn’t mind if it was sunny outside but it happened to be a wild and windy day on the West coast.
Unfortunately, I can’t recall right now if there happens to be a saint for absent-mindedness.
