Between us, J and I managed to lose my camera on our recent holiday. It was two days before the end of a fortnight’s camping trip, which included a week in the Cairngorms. I know – that’s a lot of photographs to lose for one tiny lapse in concentration. Still, friends and family will be cheered to know they are spared an evening of endless shots of Dog Features swathed in fleecy blankets to ward off impending hypothermia (boy, did it get cold at night). And, let’s face it – sob – how many photos do we need of ourselves with stunning – sob – mountain backdrops? Well, ONE would have been nice. But, hey, it’s all still up there if we want to see it. Only an eight-hour, 450-mile drive away from the flatlands of Cambridgeshire.
Anyway, before some benevolent soul starts crowdfunding our return trip, I’ll get to the real point of this post.
It wasn’t the understandable sadness about the lost photos that surprised me, it was the extent of my grief at the lost camera. How could I – a staunch non-materialist – have invested so much emotion in a completely replaceable lump of already outdated plastic?
There is a kind of logic in my grief, though. Since its purchase in 2010, nearly five years to the day, that camera has documented so much of my life, been to so many different places with me, seen what I’ve seen. More than that, I believe it’s helped me to notice things I would have missed, allowed me to observe the world differently.
It’s the same with my bicycle. At the ripe old age of 22, it still gets me from A to B and even attracts positive attention from bike mechanics. It has little monetary value anymore and 99% of people would, I am sure, have replaced it years ago. But I cannot – no, I will not part with that bike until it crumbles to dust under me (or, perhaps, more safely, while it’s in the garden shed.) In our younger days, that bike and I pedalled hundreds of miles together in search of adventure and new landscapes. But it’s not just the literal journeys we’ve been on together – sampling the patisseries of Northern France, flogging up the switchbacks of the Picos d’Europa, squelching along the rain-drenched west coast of Ireland – hell no, the bond goes way deeper than that. A true and loyal friend, it has lasted the test of time and no shiny new mountain bike or sexy hybrid is going to turn my head.
So, maybe I am some kind of sad fetishist, with over-attachment issues, but I like to think of my few valued possessions as Emily thought of Bagpuss, her cloth cat. They may be battered, obsolete, saggy, and a bit loose at the seams, but Melanie loves them.
The Power of Good Enough 