I don't know how she doesn't do it.: A wet sock.

So, I'm sorting through my huge brown handbag in the kitchen when we get back from the Isle of Wight, as you do, (Orla Kiely handbag by the way, bought it when I got some filming work last year, excuse was: need a bag big enough for a clipboard)...

And I have my arm knee-deep in Cafe Nero napkins (napkins or serviettes? which one is naff? I think it's serviettes) from when I took a massive handful of them at the ferry port because we all had hot chocolates in the car while we were waiting (and you know what happens with boys and hot chocolates in the car, don't you?)...

And all the pens and anti-bacterial gel in there (never can be too careful) and loose change and an old lip stick and 'feminine requisites' (okay, well, I'm just telling it like it really is) and I find this nasty blue plastic bag down at the bottom...

What the hell is this nasty blue plastic bag doing down here at the bottom of my lovely big Orla Kiely bag? I think, (because I really can't remember anything nowadays)...

And so I open the nasty blue plastic bag and there inside it is a soaking wet sock. A small one.

Ah yes!

All of a sudden I am transported, like Joanna Lumley in that old Nescafe ad when she takes that piece of straw from her jumper and remembers how it got there (roll in hay with sexy man), remember? Or was it Mellow Birds? Anyway, finding nasty wet sock in the bottom of my handbag has exactly the same effect on me: it makes me remember. Not a roll in the hay though, sadly, more a child in a puddle...

We were having a lovely walk, from the Botanical Gardens in Ventnor along the coastal path to the town, lots of up and then down, which I like to do all in one go without stopping - up, up, up the slope or the steps or whatever until you feel the burn in your bum and your chest starts to constrict and it hurts so much and you're in pain but yes! yes! yes! it's doing you good, you know it is, and you must be burning fat and you think you're going to die and then... oh thank God for that you've made it all the way to the top! Where there's another massive set of steps...

And the boys were running ahead, well, two of them were because Eldest had stayed behind that time, back at the cool pad we had rented, the one with the WiFi and the Sky Box and the table football and his laptop, in order to 'revise'...

And we had to keep stopping and waiting for the boys as they took detours up a slope or to roll down a grassy knoll, or, at this particular point for a dainty navigation across some stepping stones on a pond that ran into a stream that ran into the sea...

And it was all so pretty and fresh and sea-sidey-get-away-from-it-all-idyllic really and then Middle One put his massive size 10 wellies, which go very high up his leg, into the pond and Youngest started to copy, to do the same as his brother, except his wellies are not high at all because they are tiny size 1's and so Husband and I both shouted in unison: "No!" but it was too late and we watched, helpless, as the welly momentarily disappeared and lots and lots and lots of freezing cold water gushed in all over the top...

So, I pulled sloshing welly off the boy, tipped out the bath full of water in there, took the spare socks out of rucksack (oh yes! I am THAT sort of mother), used a plastic bag we happened to have with us as a sort of long sock up his leg to keep the sodden trousers away from his skin, put the fresh socks on his feet, used another nasty blue plastic bag I found in the rucksack to put the wet sock in and then, later, put the nasty blue plastic bag with the wet sock in my Orla Kiely handbag when I got back to the car. And then forgot all about it for three days...

Voila! Blue plastic bag with wet sock explained.

Apart from that it was a really wonderful little family break. We went back to a very special place we used to stay when the boys were little: a nature reserve. They ran ahead down the path just like they used to when they were small...

Later, I lay in bed that night and just before dropping off to sleep, going over the day's events in my head, as you do, I remembered exactly what they had looked like when they ran down that very same path all those years ago... Remembered it perfectly... In every detail... Until it hurt...

So, that memory of the boys on the path, that memory of the walk to Ventnor jogged by the sock, even those Cafe Nero napkins, they are all things we collect along the way, aren't they? Some we manage to hold on to forever, like my little boys running ahead on that path, which I will always have, and some we lose, like those napkins and that sock, which I just threw away.