At the risk of prompting an intervention into how my mind works, whenever I see a staple remover I think of my youngest Uncle – because the first one I ever saw was the bright green one he gave Dad for Christmas in the late seventies.
Throughout my youth he would often randomly pop up, bestowing on us his collection of Beano comics; watching an episode of Blakes 7 with us; or even borrowing my copy of Life, The Universe and Everything (a story for another time).
This makes perfect sense when I point out that, although my Mum has been to Australia (another story for another time) she’d certainly agree that Uncle T is by far the most travelled person in our family, and inbetween all that random popping up he was generally off exploring some far-flung corner of the globe. From one such trip, possibly another Christmas present, he brought back wallets for me and bruv – made from the hide of a yak (or something of that ilk (or elk)) four decades on they remain the second most stinky thing I’ve ever encountered.
By chance, and rather proving my point, we received a ‘round robin’ from him just this week in the fourth paragraph of which, and in the same tone that the rest of us might use for saying “and that was the year we had goose instead of turkey” he recalls that he spent Christmas Day 1981 crossing a river from India to Nepal on a double-decker bus ferried by two boats lashed together!
Oddly, he doesn’t also mention trekking halfway up the foothills of the Himalayas to a tiny Tibetan stationers to purchase Dad a staple remover. Probably an oversight when he was putting his letter together. (Or maybe it’s a story for another time.)
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 