The Ubiquitous Safe Place

How many times do we squirrel an item away, for its own good, in one of those? Something we particularly treasure - for instance, a photograph of special significance? The museum musing of yesterday ended with my promising to photocopy relevant pictures to illustrate my ramblings. For the generation theme to make sense, I needed to begin with Grandparents. Fine. Those pictures are already on my computer after days of careful scanning. But try as I might, I couldn't find the one of Mum and Dad I wanted, their official wedding photo. In the interests of posterity, the original is carefully wrapped in tissue paper, away from the light, so that a future generation might find it unscathed by time.

It is in a safe place.
The problem is, it's so safe, I haven't been able to find it yet....

Now, I live in a relatively small house with limited storage space. I begin to realise it must be peppered with black holes ( no, not like the cupboard under the stairs, though I do have one of those) but black holes as in space, which the scientists tell us will suck matter into their depths in the twinkling of a ...... sun, moon or star, I guess I should say, rather than an eye.
How else am I to explain the disappearance of so many objects? The glasses I used for seeing the computer screen at work and could do with right now: the second sock to match its particularly cosy partner, as alone, it must remain of use to no one but an amputee: the tiny thimble I'd been saving until one of my granddaughters reached an age where it might fit them.

The list could go on and on.

Sometimes I've found a good tactical move, is to pretend you're not looking for 'it' ( whatever it happens to be) and to simply sidle around the place, nonchalantly opening cupboards and drawers saying, 'Oh, what have we here?' as if you hadn't already ferreted about in exactly this place half an hour ago. In this way you can creep up on 'it' unawares, if you're lucky. But this plan is by no means foolproof, or by now I'd have found the spectacles, the sock, the thimble and most of all, the photograph.

No prizes for guessing how the rest of my day will be occupied, once I finish this post.

Having touched briefly upon space and its black holes, it gives me a tenuous link to the following ditty, written with small fry in mind.

The Jump

Mackenzie James McArthur
had a very big name,
although he was only a little boy.
He said,'Let's play a game!
Go on Tommy, I dare you
to jump as high as high!'
Tommy jumped the biggest jump,
right up towards the sky.

'There, and now it's your turn'
said Tom when he'd come down.
Mackenzie James McArthur
gave him a nasty frown.
He said 'I won't be beaten,
I'll show you who is best!'
He set his shoulders squarely,
folded arms across his chest.

'I can jump the highest,
just you wait and see!'
Mackenzie James McArthur
sprang higher than the tree,
higher than the chimney top,
higher than the moon.
Tommy stood and waited, thinking
'He'll have to come down soon!'