At 62, I could not remember the last thing I bought just because I liked it
At 62, I could not remember the last thing I bought just because I liked it
Six things this little bird bracelet gets right that the good jewellery upstairs gets wrong, from a woman who is not a jeweller.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Caroline, I am 62, I live in Nottinghamshire, and I have never once sat down to write about a bracelet. What started me off was a question I could not answer. My daughter asked me in the spring what the last thing was that I had bought just because I liked it. Not replacing something that had worn out. Not for somebody's birthday. Not because we needed one. Just because I liked it. I sat there and could not think of a single thing, and I am not talking about months.
The bracelet is from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly making the ordinary things a bit lovelier for a few years now. Brown cord, and three little birds sitting along a branch, about four centimetres across and no more. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition that I could be completely honest in it.
Three different women have asked me about it since. Read on.
How it happens
Here is the part I want to say properly, because I think it happens to most of us and I do not think it is anybody's fault. It creeps up on you. Everything you buy starts having a reason attached. The kettle went, so there is a new kettle. It is your grandson's birthday, so there is a present. The winter coat gave up, so there is a winter coat. Every single thing is justified, and after enough years you stop noticing that not one of them was simply because you fancied it.
The kitchen window, where most of my thinking gets done.
And jewellery goes the same way, only more so. By our age it has stopped being something you choose and become something that marks an occasion somebody else decided on. An anniversary, a big birthday, a christening. Lovely things, most of them, and all of them upstairs in a box being far too good for a Tuesday.
What I had wrong
I had it in my head that a purchase needs a justification. That you do not simply buy yourself something on a Wednesday in September because you like the look of it. That is a rule I have been quietly following for about thirty years, and I could not tell you who set it, and I know for a fact I never agreed to it.
It turns out a thing can just be something you like. Mine has three little birds sitting in a row along a branch, all facing the same way. They made me smile in the photograph and they have carried on making me smile since, and that is the entire reason I own it.
It is not for anything. There was no occasion, nobody gave it to me, and it does not commemorate a single thing. That has turned out to be the whole of the appeal.
I ordered it half expecting something flimsy for the money, and having had it on every day since, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day it came. In a proper little box, which for the price I had not expected at all.
I CHOSE IT, WHICH SOUNDS LIKE NOTHING UNTIL YOU TRY IT
This is the one that matters and it is the one I would have laughed at a year ago. Everything else in my jewellery box was chosen by somebody else, for a reason they thought of, and handed over on a date in the calendar. This one I picked. Nobody was consulted and nobody knew until it arrived. The result is that I actually notice it — I catch sight of it doing the washing up, and it is a small and entirely private pleasure about thirty times a day. I had not expected that for twenty-odd pounds.
My husband asked what the occasion was and I said there wasn't one. He looked at me as though I had grown another head.
Eileen R., Radcliffe on TrentTHREE LITTLE BIRDS ON A BRANCH, AND THAT IS THE WHOLE OF IT
The birds are the decoration and there is nothing else going on. Three of them, perched in a row along a slim bar, all facing the same way, small and smooth and rounded with little pointed tails. No stones, no dangling bits, no name plate. It catches the eye and then it stops, which is a balance I find most things get wrong in one direction or the other. People notice it from across a table and then have to lean in to see what it actually is.
The three of them. Smaller in life than they look here.
Three little birds all in a row. My granddaughter counted them and has decided the middle one is her.
Vera K., CalvertonTHE CORD IS WHY I CAN WEAR IT ON A TUESDAY
It is cord rather than a chain, two fine brown strands running side by side, with a little twist of cord at each side where the bar meets it. And that is the whole reason it works for me. A chain would have made it a jewellery-jewellery sort of thing, the kind you put on to go somewhere. Cord makes it something you put on with a jumper and forget about, which is precisely what I wanted and could not find anywhere.
The back of it. A proper clasp and a little run of chain at the end.
The cord is what sold me. I would never have worn a chain about the house and this I have not taken off.
Jill H., LowdhamIT GOES WITH WHATEVER I HAVE GOT ON
Brown cord and a soft old silver colour go with everything I own, which I say as somebody whose wardrobe is mostly navy and grey with the occasional lapse. There is nothing to match it to and nothing it clashes with. I have worn it with a cardigan to the shops, with a jumper in the garden, and with the one decent blouse to my sister's birthday, and it has not looked out of place at any of them.
Goes with absolutely everything, which is not something I can say about the rest of my jewellery.
Moira S., BlidworthON ITS OWN, OR WITH THE ONES YOU ALREADY WEAR
It is slim enough to sit next to something else without the two of them arguing. I wear mine on its own most days because I like the look of it with nothing else, but it goes perfectly happily beside a plain bangle, and my friend Sue wears hers with two others and it still reads as three birds rather than as clutter. You can build it up or leave it be, and it looks deliberate either way.
With one plain bangle. Any more than that and I think the birds would get lost.
Wears well on its own and stacks without looking fussy. I have ordered a second for my sister.
Jeanette W., RavensheadIT IS £22.95, WHICH IS RATHER THE POINT
I want to be straightforward, because the price is bound up with the whole thing rather than separate from it. At twenty-odd pounds you do not need a reason. You are not making a decision, you are not waiting for a birthday, and nobody has to be consulted. That is exactly why I ended up with it and exactly why it is on my wrist rather than upstairs in a box with the good things. Cheap enough to be allowed, and nice enough to keep wearing.
I bought it on a whim and it has had more wear than pieces that cost me ten times as much.
Rosalie P., Sutton BoningtonThe bird bracelet, against the good jewellery upstairs
I have a box of lovely things on the chest of drawers that I hardly ever open. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Given for an occasion somebody else decided on
Too good for a Tuesday, so it stays in the box
Wants an outfit built round it
You worry about it the whole time you have it on
Lovely, and worn perhaps twice a year
Chosen by you, for no occasion at all
Cord and a little bar, so it suits a Tuesday
Goes with the jumper you already have on
Small enough to forget you are wearing
On your wrist every day since it came
About the price
The bracelet is £22.95. It was £46.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that the sale is on now and the small things tend to go quickly because people order two. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have spent more than that on a lunch I have entirely forgotten, and I look at this about forty times a day.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women's words.
Where it lives on the rare occasions it is off. Which is to say, the windowsill.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you and I were sat at my kitchen table and you asked me, this is what I would say. Have a go at answering my daughter's question. What is the last thing you bought that was not replacing something, not for somebody else, and not for an occasion? If you have to think about it for a while, that is rather my point — and it is not a failing, it is just a habit that crept up while you were busy with everything else.
It is a small thing, and a cheap one. But I had somehow got to 62 believing that liking something was not a good enough reason, and it turns out it is the only one that matters.
Go and have a look while the sale is on. Pick the one you like the look of, and do not have a reason ready.
Caroline
VINTAGE BIRD CHARM ROPE BRACELET
- Three little birds perched along a slim bar
- Brown rope-style cord, two fine strands side by side
- Soft antiqued silver-coloured fittings
- Clasp fastening with a short extender chain
- Small and understated, about four centimetres across
- Wear it on its own or alongside other bracelets
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price. The small things go quickly.