Day 38: Bold-drunk and resourceful

Today I must face the possibility that I have lost my favourite cardigan.  It was baggy.  A bit loose at the seams.  But I loved it.  I've not seen it for a week, and given the weekend dust-mice corral, it's definitely not in the most likely spot - the bedroom.  Or the sitting-room.  Or my car.  So unless it's gone Houdini in the dining-room, kitchen or bathroom - which I doubt - it's gone.  It was looking rather tired, and I slightly suspect it has diminished and gone into the West, like Galadriel.  (In other words, I left it behind at the meditation retreat.) 

I've not given up hope yet.  I once found a contact lens deep in the entrails of the sofa - a hand blindly thrust down between stuffing and webbing, grasping at aged crumbs of crud.  A handful of tissue fragments, staples, pennies, grit, lentils (WHAT?  Oh, yes.  I made a bean(lentil)bag...), and at the bottom, my lens, belly up, dusty and all helpl ess.  On another occasion, back in my Crouch End days, after a particularly craven evening at The White Lion of Mortimer, I'm weaving home unsteadily when a twig flips a lens out (OK, my fault - I bounce off a bush).  On a particularly dark stretch of pavement.  No matter - I am bold-drunk and resourceful.  Noticing a well-lit house, I barrel up the path and knock at the door, in search of a torch.  I've stumbled on a party - no torches, but lots of drunk helpful people who came out with candles.  We stagger around loudly but ineffectually for a while, to no avail.  I go home, still bold-drunk and resourceful, and set my alarm for 5.00am, thinking that I'll get up early and go back to search the streets before the daily pedestrian traffic destroys all hope of finding my lens intact.  (Logical.)  The alarm goes off at 5.00am - I'm still bold-drunk, still resourceful.  Wellington boots on and a coat over my nightshirt (ever mindful of fashion), I retrace my route in the dawn light.  Not hard to find the area - spattered with footprints and waxy drips from the candle-fuelled search party.  If the lens is still there, chances are that it is ground into the pavement.  Having come this far, I lean over for a final look.  And the first thing I see is my lens, plump and shiny, sitting demurely on a dandelion leaf growing out of a crack in the wall. 

Sometimes things are lost.  Properly.  The watch that I got for my 21st birthday - lost the same day.  I knew it was gone.  Maybe my cardigan.  It feels gone. 
But I've had so many instances when I've almost given up searching for things that I thought were lost, but the final push, against the odds, has yield fruit.  Many lenses (so, so many).  My wallet.  My ring.  Some friendships.  So this post is dedicated to the final push.  Whether you're bold-drunk or bold-sober, bothering to go again. 

Go on. 

(This (left) is a message left for posterity in wet pavement concrete.  Nice work.)