A good friend of mine gave me this minature bottle as a prop for the puppet show at the book launch. Pig likes it’s tipple – now that sounds like an old lady, I should say it like it  is – Pig likes to booze!

It is quite funny, my friend is a New Zealander, but she bought this bottle a good thirty, fourty years ago on her OE. And it says on the side of the bottle Produce of Germany. She bought it at a time when I didn’t even know New Zealand existed. The alcohol has long evaporated out of the bottle through the unbroken seal. When we talked about the puppet show she immediately thought of the bottle as the right prop for Pig and digged it out. I wonder what kind of memories she has, when she looks at the bottle.

It is amazing what people keep as mementos. I have a box full “useless” stuff. I started to photograph the items, as each of them conjures up lost friends and time past. I am not lamenting the loss by any means, I just know that every person along my tracks has added to who I am now.

That is what I really wanted to say yesterday about the hammer: we look at the same thing, but we interpret it differently depending on our previous experiences. For me that is the reason why people can never see things quite the same way.