Lost Property...?

It's not unusual for people to go in to a pub, have a couple of drinks and then leave something behind when they go home.

Often — especially in a small village local like mine - they come back the next day in a bit of a panic: "did I leave my coat/wallet/mobile/mistress* here last night?" (*delete as applicable) they'll wail, and we'll happily hand back said item.

Over the years, however, we've managed to garner quite a collection in our Lost Property Dungeon (which consists mostly of a Budweiser box and a couple of coat hangers on the back door).

Spectacles of all varying prescriptions, a Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone, a scarf that smells like it belongs to a smoker with a penchant for Chanel No. 5, an expensive leather jacket and a Parker coat that, if you stuck a pole in the middle, would be large enough to create a wigwam for a family of four.

It never ceases to amaze me what people forget to take home with them but these are the items that make up the majority of our collection, plus a few other items of bric-a-brac that have turned up along the way.

Such is the size of the collection — and such is the length of time that it has been built up over - that I'm beginning to wonder what to do with it.

I could just chuck it in the back of the car and take it to Oxfam, or I could stick the lot on eBay and send whatever funds were raised to a particular charity. Or I could put a table out the front of the pub with a great big sign saying "lost property, help yourself."

But there is one item my wife doesn't want me to dispose of in any of the manners described above. She wants me to try and track down the owner of one particular piece of lost property: a bookmark.

A while ago, during a school holiday period, a family came in for lunch and the little girl was reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo.

The book is lovely and well cared for and the girl was clearly enjoying it, but the bit that got my wife was the bookmark: a homemade, laminated job with the inscription: "Thanks for coming to my party and for the present, love, Lydia xxxx"

She believes (probably rightly) that it will have some sentimental meaning to the young girl and that she may be upset at having lost it.

I have no idea how my wife thinks I'm going to be able to track the owner down but, in the interests of an easy life at home (and because bunging such an item on eBay would be pretty pointless), I thought I'd mention it here. Just, you know, in case anybody can help.

Although I'm more interested in what you do with the lost property you get in your pub. Before I start handing it all out as Christmas presents this year...