A letter from a reader

At 67, I have just bought myself jewellery for the first time in my life

I am going to write this the way I would say it across the kitchen table, because I do not know any other way. I am not a writer, and telling other women what they ought to wear is a habit I have never once been accused of.

But three different women asked me about a bracelet at the post box on the corner on Thursday morning, and by the time I had walked home I had told the story so many times that it seemed simpler to write it down once, properly.

It started a few weeks ago with my sister June, a pot of tea, and the bird feeder outside my kitchen window. We were sat watching the usual queue, the robin who thinks he owns the place, the blue tits who wait their turn, and June was fiddling with my watch strap the way she does when she is about to say something. Then she said it.

Have you ever once bought yourself a piece of jewellery?

I went up and looked in my jewellery box that evening, and she was right. The watch was a retirement present. The pearl earrings were from my husband. The brooch was my mother’s, the chain was from my daughter, and the rest arrived wrapped over the years with birthday paper on it. Every piece is precious to me, and not one of them was chosen by me. A whole lifetime of being given jewellery, and never once walking up to a counter and saying, that one, that is mine.

How it happens

Nobody decides to stop choosing for herself. It happens quietly.

You spend a few decades buying jewellery for other people, for daughters and sisters and new babies and retirements, and somewhere in all that wrapping you slip quietly off your own list. If I ever did pick something up for myself, a little voice would start up about whether it was sensible, and whether I really needed it, and I would put it down again.

And the counters do not help. Somebody asks whether it is for a special occasion, and you hear yourself say, oh, just looking. Because an ordinary Tuesday does not count as an occasion, apparently, and jewellery is supposed to be earned or given, never simply liked.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had wrong, and June never actually said it. She just left it on the table with the teapot.

I had it in my head that jewellery only means something if somebody gives it to you. That the story has to come from someone else, or it is just shopping.

It turns out the story can already be yours. I feed the birds outside that kitchen window every single morning, before the kettle has properly settled, with the labrador sighing at my feet because his breakfast is apparently taking too long. It is the quietest, most faithful ten minutes of my day, and it belongs entirely to me. So when I saw a small silver toned charm of three little birds sat together on a branch, I did not need anybody to explain what it meant. I recognised it.

The bracelet is called the Vintage Bird Bracelet

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I found it on their site that same week, and I did not sleep on it, which is not like me at all.

It is a simple thing, which is rather the point. Two slim strands of soft rounded brown cord, finished at each side with neat little coiled knots, and the three birds sitting between them in a soft, slightly worn silver tone, like something you might have inherited. At the back there is a proper little clasp with a short chain, so it fastens in a second and sits exactly where you want it on the wrist, snug or loose as you please. And it weighs so little that by the second morning I had stopped noticing I was wearing it.

I will tell you what surprised me most. It is quiet. It does not announce itself across a room the way the glittery things do. People notice it the way they notice a good watch, close up, and then they want to look properly at the birds.

What happened at the post box on the corner

On Thursday morning I walked down to the post box on the corner with June’s birthday card and two bills, the labrador on the lead, nothing about the day special at all.

The lady from the corner house got there just as I did, and as I reached up to post the letters she caught my wrist, actually caught it, and said, now where did you find that. A younger woman with a pram stopped because the two of us were blocking the pavement, saw what we were looking at, and said her mum would love one. And the lady from the card shop, out on her break, leaned over the pram to see what the fuss was, so I told the whole story a third time, with the letters still in my hand.

Three women, one post box, an ordinary Thursday. I have worn my given jewellery for a lifetime and it has never once stopped traffic on the pavement. The first piece I ever chose myself managed it before the second post.

Three things I have learned since

One. It fits, whoever you are. The little chain at the back means it sits exactly where you want it, which almost nothing with a clasp has ever done for me. One size, honestly meant, whatever wrist you have.

Two. You stop noticing it, and other people start. It is so light that I forget it entirely until somebody points at it. I have worn it through baking, gardening and a labrador’s bath, and forgotten it was there each time.

Three. Choosing it yourself changes how you wear it. The given pieces I save for best, because losing one would break my heart. This one I simply wear, every day, because it answers to nobody’s occasion. That difference took me a lifetime to find out.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that nearly had me putting it down again, out of old habit.

The Vintage Bird Bracelet is £22.95. It was £40.00.

My first thought was the old voice asking whether I needed it. My second thought was that I have spent more than that on birthday jewellery for other people without blinking, more times than I could count. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run the sale to move the season’s stock along.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “I bought it for my own birthday and I have worn it every day since. Everybody leans in to look at the little birds.” That was the one that decided it for me.

My daughter picked it up off the hall table on Sunday, turned it over, and asked where it was from. There is a second one on its way to her now. Given jewellery, you see. I have not entirely changed my ways.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat at my kitchen table with the teapot going and the feeder in full swing outside, this is what I would say.

Think about how long it has been since you chose a piece of jewellery for yourself. Not for a wedding, not because an outfit needed finishing, just because you looked at something small and recognised it. If the answer is years, or never, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this little bracelet. Not because a bracelet will change your life. It will not. But there is something in wearing one small thing that nobody gave you, that you simply liked, that I had done without my whole life, and I would rather you did not do without it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on now and the first autumn stock is already going. And it is one size with that little chain at the back, so there is no guessing about wrists, yours or anybody else’s, if you are quietly thinking about Christmas already. I will say no more.

It turns out I knew what I liked all along.

Maggie