Yesterday, I had cause to pay a visit to a publishing company I used to work for something like twelve years ago. A while back, they moved into new premises and have recently decided to decorate it by asking local artists to bring their stuff in to display. It's a great idea because, living with Eleanor, that's something I would know about - the house is full of canvases leaning up against walls and hanging around, or at least it was until yesterday when I took a car full of her paintings over there. Now the house is strangely void of any paintings at all which gives me an opportunity to sneak up some of the art I've collected over the last few years. Anyway, when I got there, I found that aside from the boss and the receptionist, I don't know anybody that works there anymore - but here's a good story all the same.

Many years ago, maybe in something like 2002, I bought a tin of soup for lunch. Why I would buy soup I have no idea, but there followed a conversation in the design studio about how the soup could be used for emergencies and thus, it sat on a shelf just above my head until the day I left because the apocalypse never came (though sometimes in there, it was pretty close). Despite the move and the lack of anybody I know who works there anymore, the soup became part of the company and still lives in a corner of the new studio being looked after by strangers.

I'd forgotten all about it but here's a picture of that very soup:

I love the fact that they've kept my soup. I don't know why but it seems to give some importance to life in a way that I can't explain. Mind you, it says Best Before 2005 on the bottom of it so it would have to be a very serious emergency to crack it open now. I think I would rather starve.