Throwaway Thursday: the purple folder

An occasional series that I might also title, 'Things in my house that are basically rubbish but I am a borderline hoarder and cannot bring myself to throw them out'. The idea is to memorialise such things here and then bin them for good.

I can't tell you how long I lusted after this folder. I saw it, this exact shade of shiny lilac, in a Ryman, circa 1994. There was no Ryman in Portsmouth. I had no need for a ring binder - I hauled all of my notes around in a lever arch file that I had plastered with bits I'd cut out of magazines, with notes from my friends written on the inside covers. (That makes me a little sad because I'd love to read those notes again). 

With no easy access to a Ryman and no need for a new folder, this folder remained unpurchased for a long time. My lovely Mother Hand tried to get me one like it, but it was never the right purple or it wasn't shiny or it didn't have white insides or some other absolutely miniscule detail that was exceptionally important to me as an ungrateful swine of a teenager. 

I can't remember when I actually bought this; it would either have been when I was studying for A-level Business Studies in the year before I went to uni, or while I was at uni. Or perhaps it was after. I don't remember the exact, choirs of angels, halo'd in gold moment when I finally parted with hard-earned cash for it. But I remember very clearly the visceral desire I felt for it, over a period of years. I'd visit it in Ryman every time I went past one. This has meant that I haven't thrown it out, even though it is faded, and scratched, and has lain empty for a number of years, since I decided notes on educational ICT from 2002 were probably never going to be useful again. No, I have hoarded it. 

It turns out, though, this is actually from Woolworths. Somewhere along the way, my Ryman dream merged with something more accessible and the lack of stickers, notes and otherwise suggests it arrived in my life some distance past full-time education. So it is a cuckoo. It is not the totem I had convinced myself it was. 

I'm not throwing it out though; it can come to school and start a new life as a sixth former's day folder. It, too, deserves stickers and graffiti from friends.