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Warm Up – My Collection

Put in the chat something that you currently collect or have collected as a child.

Pick one of these objects (your own or someone else’s). Imagine that it can talk. Why does it consider itself to be of importance? What does it think of the person who collects it?

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Nicobar Scare Devil

By Aoife Mannix

You lay in the hospice under healing hands.

A prayer you learned as a child, the silver charm bracelet

with the tiny gold bottle of Guinness, two soap stone seals

hand carved in the seventies when it was still okay

for the card to read Eskimo. You said, ‘may I be

in heaven half an hour before the devil knows I’m dead’

and laughed at the dark figure in the top hat you had

no time to stop for. A wedding album, a leather covered

copy of Macbeth, a Swedish painting of the sea,

a Russian teapot enamelled with orange chickens.

Your blessings repeated over and over through

that long night when I begged you to be quiet.

Persian faces painted on plates that you haggled

for for hours in a market in the middle of the desert.

A small box bought at the Taj Mahal,

your name on a silver spoon with a palm tree handle,

a black and white photograph of a teenage boyfriend,

a wicker sewing basket. These sacred relics,

these precious talismans, who’s to say they don’t

protect me from the dark?  Though I knew it was

too late to answer your superstitious questions,

I wished I could keep a lock of your coral hair

curled with the poison of chemotherapy.

Or save just one of your fingers

to keep me pointed in the right direction.

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Read extract about ponies – paragraph this is the part I dread

I Was Told There'd Be Cake eBook : Crosley, Sloane: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Write a story about someone who has a secret collection – this could be because they’re embarrassed by it or it could be because it’s illegal, too cute or too sinister.

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Sloane Crosley (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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I Was Told There’d Be Cake eBook : Crosley, Sloane: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

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Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

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The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

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Why me? There's so many of us. Why did I become so much more loved than everyone else?

I've been through so many events with you. You've cried on my fluffy ears so many times they've become thread bare.

I'm still here. Even today you've held me close to comfort you in a time of need. To help with the intense overwhelm.

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You saved me. I was probably going to scrap. Not sure how old I am but I’m at least 38 because they moved from Manchester in 1986. Tou’ve not played me yet. I think you don’t want to because I was someone else’s first.

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My collection looks like a collection of tobacco tins. They live in a locked glass cabinet in my living room for everyone to see, some rusty, Some hinged. Every so often when I get the urge, I will take an empty one out with me on my adventures. When I return, it will be added to the collection. You see the collection is not the tins, but what they contain. Each contains a press sealed plastic bag with a date written on. The date I collected the lock of a stranger’s hair.

This creeped me out writing it. It is definitely not autobiographical.

Part 2:There is one tin that has a shelf of it’s own. An old Old Holborn tin. Nice condition, not rusty, but not special. A tin collector wouldn’t give it a second look. She was my first. She was in the seat in front of me on the transatlantic flight, her curly black locks falling around the side of the seat. Nobody bothered her. I wanted to ask for her autograph, but I was too shy. Then I thought of something better. I reached into my carry-on bag and removed a small tin. Not a tobacco tin. A travel sewing kit. I removed the scissors, and cut a lock of her hair, folded it into the tin. When I got home, I put it into a bag, and put it in the tobacco tin.

What makes them get rid of the collection.

Everything changed one Sunday evening when I was watching Antiques Roadshow. A tin collector was showing their favourite tins. And there on screen was my JK Rowling. One thousand pounds!. Then another, Emma Bunting, was worth seven hundred and fifty.
I saw the tins in a new light. I relegated the Old Holborn tin to the bottom of the cabinet, and JK and Emma promoted to the top. Afgter about six months of research I had every tin documented, positioned according to value. I emptied the contents into a paper bag and burned it. Except for Old Holborn. I couldn’t get rid of her.

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I step into the room through the small gap in the door. I'm too curious to walk away. Grandad hastily turns towards me. He shouts at me to leave. I can't. I'm mesmerised by all the things I can see.

We have learnt about Hitler at school. I know all about the Nazis. I know that Grandad likes to collect things linked to Nazis. I've seen the striking swastika flag hanging from the wall in his room. The room I'm not supposed to look in, but why?

I look over to the side of the room that is impossible to see through the door. A big glass cabinet fills the whole wall. Hanging in front of it an old army uniform. It looks like it must be from the second world war. Definitely German. The bright red arm band showing a symbol that signifies pure evil tells me so. This isn't just any army uniform. There's something special about it but I can't quite decide what it is.
Even though I can tell the black jacket has faded over the years, the silver buttons are polished. The sun is bouncing off them in all directions. The long black boots standing next to it on the floor, these are polished too. I know it's old, but other than the fading it doesn't look old. It's treasured and looked after. The room smells of polish and there's an old rag sat on the desk with black splodges on.

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It's Thursday again. As soon as I am home from school I get out of my uniform faster than I even thought possible, my shoes are on and I'm anxiously waiting to go for our weekly visit to my grandparents. I really need to get back into my Grandad's room. I need to find out where he got those things from. Why does he love them so much? Does he actually like Hitler's ideas? I feel myself get goosebumps. I shudder. I am transported back to a party I went to as a much younger child with Grandad to meet some of his friends. I remember one of them ruffling my hair and saying I was a perfect Aryan boy. No! It couldn't be?

We arrive at their house. I walk up the stairs saying I needed to use the bathroom. The door was wide open. I am confused. It was definitely this room. I enter. Inside there is an old wooden double bed. It's neatly made with a pink and yellow patchwork quilt. I can still smell polish. But it's gone. Everything has gone. I'm confused. I feel a tear start to roll down my cheek. I need to find out what happened to it. Why has it gone? Where has Grandad gone? Is he OK?

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Something just draws him in. He wants to learn everything there is to know about you. I know you have done such terrible things but the ways you achieved your goals were most certainly amazing. Maybe this is what has him hooked.

I've seen the way he handles the dagger. He carefully traces over the lettering "Blut und Ehre" that is inscribed on the blade with his long skeletal finger. I wonder what he is thinking when he does this.

Is he wondering what horrors the knife may have been part of? Whether it has seen the "action" of war.

He turns and spits me watching. He quickly places the knife back into the leather sheath to shield it from me