Bookmark

When I was in primary school we went on a school trip to Edinburgh. I remember the headmaster having us practice "walking" in the school yard before hand - we didn't want the Scots to think that English school children couldn't walk properly... Anywhere when I was there I bought a leather bookmark - and managed to lose it on the train on the way home.

A subsequent school trip wasn't quite as adventurous, we only went across the border to Yorkshire - though some would say a more dangerous trip for young Lancastrians! In Skipton I bought a bookmark and managed not to lose it. However for some reason - possibly boredom - I mutilated it in an English lesson at secondary school.

I acquired one or two more leather bookmarks though my teens but for some reason I decided that I had to replace the missing one from Scotland and the mutilated one. Replacing the Skipton Castle was easy, I bought that when I visited Skipton as a university student, however though I went back to Edinburgh several times as a student I never found the bookmark again...

Everywhere I've been since I had enough spare cash (which I didn't really have as a student) I've bought bookmarks. It's become a little silly as I now have far more bookmarks than it's sensible. I've become quite adept at sniffing them out in gift shops: they have to be the proper leather ones, not the cheap board ones. My aim now is to collect the less common colours, like purple.

Anyhow a few years ago my batter half fancied a camping holiday in Scotland, so this time I had to find that Edinburgh bookmark - so I dragged her round all the right shops until I found it. Same design and colour as I remembered as a child some 30 years earlier. That one I didn't lose.

Anyhow today hasn't been very exciting - lots of tedious house work and no exciting photo opportunities other than the giant hole the neighbours have dug in their front garden - which I'd rather not fall into, hence this indoors blip.

BTW: The map location is approximate and a bit pointless on an indoors shot.