A pile of socks has been travelling around our house for the past few years. It’s an evolving pile, which grows and decreases depending on the house occupants. Socks with a matching pair move in and out of the pile, but some socks have been there for years….waiting for a partner to emerge from the washing. It must be exciting for them when they’re joined by newcomers – the occasional Christmas stocking fillers. Although their normal resting place is the spare room bed they have been known to move into bags in the airing cupboard or into wardrobes, even under beds, when the house is full of visitors.

The call used to go out on a Saturday afternoon…
“Mum, where are you?”
“I’m in the spare room.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m having a sock party….do you want to come?”

‘Sock parties’ usually happened on the spare room bed and involved the ‘sock game’ which is finding pairs until the pile is reduced to the same old lonely favourites. The thick grey one, the day of the week socks with a flash of green or orange, the indistinguishable black ones which required close examination to see if any of them actually matched up, the various white or nearly white trainer socks and the odd ski sock – too good to throw away in case the other half turned up. Sadly time is running out for these odd socks… next week they will be consigned to the recycling bin. It’s definitely the end of an era!

I shouldn’t be sorry about dumping the pile of odd socks, but when I realised I’d be throwing them out I felt a bit sad…not about the socks (that would be silly!), but sad about leaving all those years of memories of the things we’ve done in the house – including ‘sock parties’, which usually involved some good chats one to one with whoever joined me in the quiet of the spare room. It seems it’s the little things like a basketball net rescued from the tip, the painted plate of a teddy in a wood of lumpy trees and then of course, the bundle of socks that triggers a little pang of sadness, in between the final packing and cleaning.

One thing is for certain, socks won’t be in big demand in Cyprus, whether they’re odd or in pairs. My flip flops will be my new best friends.