Collecting #1: ticket stubs

In a hotel room in Heraklion the other evening, I flung my Samsonite bag open wide to retrieve a corkscrew from a handy plastic zip-up pocket inside. We’d had a long day of travel, the weather was terrible, and my husband and I needed a glass of red wine. Although we’ve been travelling around the world together like this, from one assignment direct to another, for over two years, it was the first time Terry had noticed this little ‘filing cabinet’ of mine. “That’s like one of those folders or credenzas,” he pointed out. And it is. Only I store my precious little collections in plastic re-sealable sandwich bags instead of paper sleeves. So, what do I collect then and why? Well, my most valuable collection consists of our travel ticket stubs – whether it’s by plane, train, bus, or boat, I secret each of the little paper slips away. One day I hope we write that book we keep postponing about our two years (or so) on the road, and those tiny ticket stubs will serve as chapter-starters to our story. But they’re just as much a record and reminder of the trip itself – the date and time travelled and destination journeyed to – as they are a little piece in the big puzzle that is our travelling life. So who else out there keeps their ticket stubs?