Downstairs on the workbench, on top of my dad’s wooden toolkit that he made and brought over when my folks came here, I have discovered a strange collection of… well, I guess you’d call it pottery. Maybe. It seems that like some parents keep childhood drawings, my folks ended up hanging onto the various clay projects that each of the kids made. I had completely forgotten about them. Certainly I hadn’t realised there was such a collection. I’m tempted to take some pictures, like art objects in a gallery catalogue, just because it would amuse me. Wow, see that grey-blue, well mostly grey lumpy thing over there, notice it’s extra lumpy around the edge, and it’s slightly less lumpy in the middle? That’s how you can tell it’s an ashtray, of course. Well, that and when your kid tells you that’s what it is. My folks didn’t smoke, so I have no idea why I figured it was a good thing to make. Boy is it ugly. Turned out to be useful though. No really. See my dad didn’t smoke, but sometimes salesmen would come into his office who did. And he hung onto that ashtray for years. So after a while the conversation went something like this. D’you mind if I smoke? No, I’ll get you an ashtray (produces lumpy grey clay thing). That’s lovely, someone’s an artist. My son made that. Nice, how old is he? Twenty-seven. At which the salesman frankly never knew just what to say. A useful tool for that reason alone. And yeah, I guess I come by my sense of goofy honestly.