What’s the worst thing about moving one’s possessions from a former home to a new house? It’s losing things! I’m not referring to that Picasso I can’t seem to find or that little piece of rococo Meissen. Rather, it’s the seemingly insignificant items that matter most. Since we started our move (it’s finished now but not quite. I still have to transfer the garden hose extension, for instance) I have been unable to locate my Swiss Army knife and my box of coloured crayons. Things were even worst until a couple of days ago when Sandra managed to find the four panes of glass to fit into our garden lantern.  There they were, purposefully placed against a cellar wall. But then glass is generally transparent so how could one immediately spot them?

One loses things all the time. Or at least we do. Actually in most cases it’s luckily not actually losing but misplacing them.  For instance, to our shock horror, yesterday evening just as we were starting another tournament of Chinese Checkers I found one of my pegs (I always like to play using the colour blue) missing!

Even worst is that for a couple of days now I have lost my medical prescription papers for my blood test, dutifully typed out by my Doctor’s secretary. Where did I leave them? I thought in the car but then I may have moved them to a safer place. And that’s where the trouble starts. Moving stuff to what one believes is a safer and easier place to find things. An example of this is the locality of the spare key to my garden shed. I know where I’d put it but the key wasn’t there anymore! Then I remembered that I’d changed its place to another location since I felt that undesirables now knew where the spare key was kept. But I couldn’t remember the new place. And so the enervating saga goes on…and on. Worst of all is the situation with computer passwords which get changed and then NOT written down. But then we are really entering disastrously hopeless territory enough to tear out what hair one’s got left.

Let me try to put things into perspective. Most things (apart from that Picasso) can be replaced. Even lost Chinese chequer marbles! What is more important is not to lose one’s own marbles, one’s life or, more importantly the life of one’s beloved. Today, for instance, is Saint Valentine’s day and I celebrate the fact that both I and my supreme love are still alive and, moreover, in reasonable health, surrounded by a lovely environment, nice cats and enough vitals to feed on and drink to celebrate.

Those should be the only things it would be essential not to lose and so, in keeping, with previous Saint Valentine’s days we have passed together I write another paean to   ‘la mia bella’.

Saint Valentine’s Day 2022

You are my sempiternal Valentine:

lucid snowdrop in winter’s darkest night,

the mother goddess’s corybantine,

ethereal light that ever shines bright.

You fill our mountain house with sweetest love;

soft sylvan slopes breathe coming spring’s flowers,

the chestnut glades fit you like a glove

and promise the happiest of happy hours.

I am so lucky to have and hold you –

your warmth, your softest cheeks your lucent eyes –

in my arms for every moment that’s true

and banish for ever all saddest sighs!