A letter from a reader

At 68, my granddaughter pointed out that my jewellery only came out when somebody got married

I have written exactly two letters in my life that strangers were meant to read. One was to the council about the lock on the allotment gate, and this is the other. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it was my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three different women asked me about a bracelet in the bird hide at the nature reserve on Sunday, and I have now explained it enough times, mostly in a whisper, that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started at our granddaughter Ellie’s. She is fifteen and notices everything. She was helping me look for a hair grip in my handbag before my nephew’s wedding, and she found my little jewellery pouch in the side pocket, the one that only goes in the bag for weddings. She tipped it out on the table. Brian’s mother’s pearls. The gold chain he bought me for our silver wedding. A brooch I have worn to every christening for thirty-odd years. Then she looked at my bare wrist, and back at the pile, and said it.

Nana, your jewellery only comes out when somebody gets married.

She was right, and I did not much like it. I went through the calendar in my head that night. Weddings, christenings, the odd anniversary do. Perhaps six days a year. The other three hundred and fifty-nine, my wrist went out to the allotment, the shops and the park with nothing on it but my old watch.

I will not pretend I chose that. Nobody decides to save her nice things for six days a year. It creeps up on you.

How it happens

When I was first married I wore a little something most days, because that was what you did. Then the children came, and anything that dangled got pulled. Then there was work, and then there was the allotment, and nobody digs potatoes in pearls.

So the good things went back in the box, and the box went in the drawer, and the drawer only got opened when a card came through the door with silver writing on it.

And the jewellery shops do not help. Everything in the window is either for a big occasion, all sparkle and presentation boxes, or so thin and fiddly that I could not do the clasp up without my glasses and Brian’s help. There is nothing in between for a woman who would like to look a bit nice on an ordinary Tuesday.

So I did what a lot of us do. I stopped wearing anything, and I stopped looking.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong.

I thought jewellery had to be for best. If a piece was worth wearing, it was worth saving, and if it was not worth saving, it was not worth wearing. For best, or for nothing. It never occurred to me there was a third sort.

It turns out there is. It is the sort that is quiet enough to go with a fleece and wellies, and nice enough that a stranger in a bird hide leans over to ask about it. I did not know it existed until I was 68, and I had to find it by accident.

The bracelet is called the Vintage Bird Bracelet

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique I have bought my own things from for a while now. I was looking at a cardigan, if you must know, and there it was underneath.

It is called the Vintage Bird Bracelet. Two slim brown rope-style cords, and in the middle a little silver-toned branch with three birds sat on it in a row. I will be honest, it was the birds that did it. Since Brian retired we have gone to the hide at the nature reserve most Sunday mornings, him with his binoculars and his notebook, me with the flask. I spent the first year pretending to be interested and the next five being interested. Three little birds on a branch is what I look at every Sunday.

It is understated, which is the whole point. It does not look daft with my gardening fleece, and it does not look underdressed with my good coat. It sits next to my old watch without the two of them arguing, and I am told it would sit happily with another bracelet too, if I ever get that adventurous.

There is nothing clever about it. It is a pretty bracelet with a bit of character, and it does not ask to be saved for best.

What happened in the bird hide

I had it on the Sunday after it came. Brian and me, and Sylvia, who had finally agreed to come after six years of me asking, and spent the first twenty minutes telling us the bench was damp.

The woman along the ledge from us leaned over and asked, in a whisper, where it was from, before the heron had even landed. Then the lady behind her asked. Then a younger woman who had come in with a camera the size of a marrow asked, and by then Brian was shushing the lot of us.

Sylvia, who has never once passed comment on anything I have worn in thirty years, looked at my wrist on the ledge and said it was the first bit of jewellery she had ever seen on me that was not at a wedding. From Sylvia, that counts as gushing.

I wore it to the allotment on the Tuesday, and to the christening on the Saturday, and I did not take it off in between. That is the rarest sort of jewellery. The piece you wear with your gardening things and your good coat, and it looks right with both.

Three things worth knowing

One. It goes with what you already wear. Fleeces, cardigans, the good coat, a summer blouse. I have not found anything yet that it argues with, and I have tried, because I am like that.

Two. It is not too much. The birds give you something to look at without it being flashy. People notice it up close, the way they notice a nice watch, and then they lean in for the birds.

Three. The good things will still be there for the weddings. I have not given up the pearls. I have just stopped making my wrist wait for somebody else’s big day.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise. The price made me suspicious.

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

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I once paid more than that to have the pearls restrung.

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 have a sale on at the moment while the first of the autumn stock comes in.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, and they sounded like real people, so I read on. One woman from Knutsford had written, “I keep meaning to take it off for the garden and I never do. It has been to two weddings and a car boot.”

Then I ordered one for our daughter, and Ellie has already asked when it is her turn.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with the kettle on, this is what I would say.

Go and look in your jewellery box, or your pouch, or wherever yours lives. If the nice things in it only come out when somebody gets married, 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 putting on one pretty thing on an ordinary Tuesday that I had gone without for forty years, and I would rather you did not go without it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the first of the autumn stock is already going. And there is just the one design and it is one size, so there is nothing to dither over.

The pearls are still in the box. The birds come everywhere.

Pat