This is one of many rubber stamp drawers I have. I have been collecting them since 1980 when I discovered the International Mail Art Network at the Greenwich Theatre Gallery exhibition organised by Ti Parks.  I have always been an artist - trained as a painter and...

This is one of my dormant things stashes, on a bookshelf next to the sofa. I live in a rented modern flat, but I still cart a lot of stuff with me whenever I move. This stash is actually an aluminium herb planter, but doesn't really work well as such, so it has been a...

Magic Eight Ball why do I keep you? “You can count on it!” it says. Not quite the answer, I think. But it has been on a journey. It was given to me whilst I was a student in Nottingham about ten years ago I would guess. I can remember that for a while it was used from...

This is my oldest brother's stuffed bunny. It's 50-odd years old. I always liked it and semi-adopted it as a child, when he had moved on to other things. Cleaning out my parent's home last spring I came across it tucked deep in a closet and could not bear to heave it...

A drawing by Lynne Chapman, who is the Leverhulme Trust funded artist-in-residence at the Morgan Centre at the University of Manchester. Two plaits, cut off at different times, are kept in tissue paper in the attic. One example of many where people keep old hair...

This is one of two boxes of fabric that I keep. I used to make a lot of my own clothes and used to buy fabric when I spotted something I liked, especially if it was on offer. I used to have a sewing machine but it broke and I kept the boxes of fabric for years even...

When I moved to CDs I re-bought a lot of the albums I already had on cassette. So these remnants are things that were special in some way but that I haven’t (or couldn’t) buy on CD. Some are ones that we used to play in the car when I was a little kid – I can remember...

I’ve had this since I was about 8. It is a normal-sized cork with a lid and a hollow in it with three miniature dice. It was a promotional item from a company my dad worked for that made a lot of cork stuff. He brought one each home for me and my brother. I was...

I have continuous quest for some kind of – possibly mythical – hair product that suits my hair. I used to have one but it was discontinued, so I try new ones but they always fall short. I’ve rejected these, but still have them. There’s no way I need three slightly...