Put it in the safe place, never to be found again....

I have a habit of putting all my important documents – tax affairs, insurance details etc – away in safe place. The process is the same. Something comes in through the post, I open it, wave it at the husband and tell him that I’m putting it away somewhere safe. The safe zone is not specified at the time. It is usually in one of 10 cupboards in the kitchen; on top of the fridge; in one of three drawers in the kitchen or six drawers in the bedroom; the glove compartment of the car (if it is even mildly car related); one of my six handbags or into the pocket of whatever coat I am wearing at the time.
This method usually serves me well until, that is, I have need of super important document. And when would that ever happen?
I enrolled my youngest son in nursery school this week. I had put the application form in my current safe place (stuck behind the calendar which is pinned to the notice board). And took it to the school. They told me I needed his original birth certificate. I knew it was in another safe place, so safe that it probably will never be found ever again. I cast my mind back three years. What was my favoured safe location for my really important documents then? Bottom drawer of the kitchen? Stuffed into tan handbag? Inside a plastic bag shoved to the back of the cupboard under the stairs? There was no telling, so I had to conduct a massive and sweeping search operation of the house and attic.
And I failed to find it. But I did find a video tape of my oldest son when he was just a baby. Back then we used videos in our camcorders instead of your fancy discs, and transferred them chunky VHS tapes to play in our gigantic video recorders. Slimline was not in fashion then.
The tape had ‘Daniel at eight months’ scribbled on it. And I remembered it being filmed as if it was yesterday. We were living in Belfast and my Mum and Dad had come on their weekly Saturday visit. Being the first ever grandson Daniel was hero-worshipped for a time, until all the rest of them came along and royally spoiled it all for him. Mum had filmed my boy in his high chair just staring at the camera for a full 30 minutes, intermittently pointing. She had then taken it home, copied it, stuck a note on it saying ‘hilarious’ and posted it off to relatives up and down the country, who no doubt wondered what the hell type of mind-bending drugs she was consuming to find it entertaining.
I brought it into the living room and attempted to load it into the video player. Yes we kept the thing, we’re hoping as an antique it’ll be worth money when we sell it at a space-age auction in a few years to fund our wild retirement years. But something was blocking the way. I despatched the oldest boy to the kitchen for a torch and on closer inspection I found what the problem was. Inside the machine was a full packet of peppermint poppets; a pancake circa 2009; a gooey substance that may have started off life as a banana; an empty packed of cheese and onion crisps; a number of wrestler cards; the remote control for the DVD player which had disappeared last year and a plastic dinosaur gifted to us by McDonald’s when we purchased a kid’s meal.
My youngest boy had been using the defunct video player as the perfect and safe place to store his important items.
Why didn’t I think of that? Anyone looking for my insurance documents or Will they’re in my new safe place – stuffed inside the video recorder, to the left of the banana.