When I was a nipper of nine and Big Bruv was eight, our American Granny made us pyjama-and-nigh-cap sets. Mine was made of pink viyella with little yellow teddies, and his was pale blue viyella with even paler blue ducklings.
Long after I'd grown out of the pyjamas, I kept the night cap, and I took it with me to Bellingham International Camp when I was a seventeen-year-old sixth former, where I fell in love with Norwegians, buried pork pies in the sand at Bamburgh (third packed lunch in a row. Ugh, fiendish things!), danced at the disco and had a whale of a time. The camp was run in a state boarding school in the wilds of Northumberland and was attended by Belgians (or Belgiums, as we knew them), Norwegian, French, German and English kids.
When I got home, I realised to my horror that I hadn't got my night cap any more and I missed it sorely all year.
I imagined the boarders wearing it, tearing it and binning it.
Imagine my joy when I went back the next year, and there it was in a cardboard box, having tempted no-one with its potential. So here it is, a symbol of raggeddy fortitude and loyalty, and possibly the subject of the most boring and pointless blog posting you will read all year!
How cool that it was still there, waiting for you. Nettie lost her bag once. A year later, long after cancelling and replacing everything in it, we had a call from a local pub saying they had it behind the bar. It had turned mahogany brown by the time she got it back.
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