GLOVE 5

WHEN:	22nd December 2000, 6.20pm
WHERE:	Outside Borders Tottenham Court Road, WC1
HAND:	Left
DESCRIPTION:	Longer, black, lady's glove. Suede with a sort of fur wrist trim. Made in China.

I found this one while on the way to meeting a group of men I really love. We were all at University together years ago, and we have a big Christmas meal each year. This time we also went to see a West End show. It was about three men who are in a little gang together and rely on each other, but they argue constantly. One of them buys a painting and one them is about to get married. As we were all men ourselves, we quite liked the ideas the play had about men (though it was written by a woman) but we didn't think the performances were that hot. Over dinner, one man told the rest of us he would host a New Years' Party and that we were all invited. I shared with the men, the fact that I had lost my woman and they were all sympathetic, even those men that had managed to preserve their relationships with women, or start new, more successful ones, over the past year.

Christmas was partly really hard, partly really easy. I had been looking forward to being with Kitty and maybe spending time with her family, but it wasn't to be.

I wasn't exactly looking for lost gloves all this time, but you find that when you set yourself a mission like this, you surprise yourself by how much it takes you over. I was almost willing glove wearers to drop them, just so I'd have more for the collection. I would pour scorn on smug pairs that looked great together and hope that soon one of them would end up like me. Sorry, with me. In this collection.

I began to work out the psychology of lost gloves. Do they drop in pairs, with only the one recovered by the owner? If so, how can the owner ignore one? Do right handed people lose more left handed gloves? And/Or vice-versa? Are they like sunglasses, in that it's best to get a cheap pair as you're bound to lose them anyway? And that string that goes down children's' sleeves and is sewn into their mittens, isn't that a great idea?