UPFRONT: 'THE ART OF losing isn't hard to master," at least according to poet Elizabeth Bishop, and who am I to argue? After all, I seem to have the whole losing thing down to a fine art myself. I can, in fact, lose things – things that have been unlost for generations – with a speed and thoroughness sadly lacking in every other area of life. I could be entrusted with any impossible- to-mislay item, have it bolted to my very hands in fact, be locked in an empty room, and still come out shaking my head sadly and with no notion of its possible whereabouts. Impressive, eh? I'm like Houdini, except instead of escaping things, things escape me. Which is, regrettably, a much less marketable kind of magic.
It’s a heart-thrumming existence I lead in Loserville. Every second brings palpitations of panic over the latest lost object: life is a constant swoop between despair and delight and back again as things persistently elude my possession only to be rediscovered – hurray! Joy unbridled! – and then just as quickly lost again.
In the past 24 hours alone, I’ve lost my keys (twice), my wallet (ditto), my shoes, my swipe card, my BT password, a family heirloom and my engagement ring.
You’re probably not too worried about the latter, because as some readers may recall, my original engagement ring cost €20 and was too big to wear on my ring finger anyway. Couldn’t be resized, either, because it was made of tinfoil, or some such non-precious metal, as was made clear to me when I went to have it assessed by the jeweller. Which is fine. Who cares? I never wanted one anyway. Ha!
But no sooner had I gone public about my objections to engagements rings than one arrived in the post from my future family-in-law. An antique ruby ring that had once belonged to my intended’s grandmother, wrapped in family lore and sentiment, and gobsmackingly gorgeous. That shut me up lickity split. One’s principles will only take one so far, after all.
And what did I do with the first thing of real value that I’d ever owned? Lost it, of course! Even though I treated that ring with more care than Gollum did his precious. Because therein lay the problem, see? I kept putting the little ruby fecker in safe places, so safe that, once I’d squirrelled it away, I practised some sort of elaborate spycraft on myself and erased the location from my own memory. How’s that for safe? So safe was this ring in fact that, one fateful day not long after I received it, its precise co-ordinates were lost to me entirely.
First stage: denial. Obviously, I hadn’t just gone and lost my newest and most valuable possession. It wasn’t lost, I reasoned with myself. I just couldn’t put my hand to it at that particular moment. Nor the next, as it turned out. Moment followed ringless moment.
After increasingly frantic fumblings around pockets and sinks, I moved on to stage two: panic. HE’LL NEVER MARRY ME NOW! I’M DOOMED! So hard was stage two upon the nerves, however, that I quickly abandoned it in favour of the more satisfying stage three: suspicion. If the ring was not lost, and certainly not found, then there was no way round it other than to blame everyone else in existence for thieving it.
Oh, the innocents that passed under my accusing gaze: the sticky-fingered plumber who had arrived to fix a drippy tap mar dhea, or the recycling man who had taken away all those empty tuna cans without first checking for ruby rings. My world was suddenly peopled by magpies and thieves, and I regarded all comers as possible ring-pinchers.
Including the very man who’d given me the ring in the first place. Why was he looking so calm? Why when he heard what had befallen his family heirloom was he so suspiciously understanding?
But even he was bothered. Which led to stage four: desperation, quickly followed by stage five: spiritualism. Strange how the helplessness of losing something will bring so many stray sheep scampering back into the fold. Even my card-carrying rationalist of a fiance, the man who comes out in an allergic rash at the mere mention of The Secret – the bestselling book and film that purports to reveal a centuries-old secret that all you have to do if you want something is ask the Universe nicely – was suddenly employing it. He actually offered to renounce all manner of vices if the Universe could see it in its heart to give back my engagement ring. My atheist love, in conversation with a higher power. I would have intervened, but was too busy jawing with St Anthony myself.
And sure enough, the Universe and St Anthony, combined with some methodical searching by yer man (I was busy running around in circles and slapping my head) finally produced the ring. From – I told you so – a safe place. Suffice to say, the ring is back, and as near as bolted to my finger now. But you know what? The hit of heady joy I experienced when that ring was found almost made it worth losing in the first place. That’s the thing about finding things: the high produced is a pleasure that almost makes a virtue of the absent-mindedness that led to it.
I said almost. This story, luckily, ends well with the return of my ring. But I think we’ve all learned our lesson here. Namely, never, ever admit to using The Secret. Especially if your fiancee writes a column in a national newspaper.