I do love a sparkly.

I am a big fan of jewellery and I have to say that my best beloved is a good sparkly buyer.

It doesn’t all have to be expensive – but more of that later.

A wise friend once told me that she bought a piece of jewellery for herself when anything significant happened in her life.

So, I took a leaf out of her advice, as it were.

I have earrings which commemorate my resignation from a difficult organisation, earrings which commemorate me finding this place to live, a bracelet for a good friend who died, another for a significant birthday…

The first ring my BB bought me, the owl brooch he bought back from Paris, the Saxon scarf pin made into a necklace he bought for a birthday, and the diamond ring from a pawn shop in Brussels to try and convince Washington that we were married – it was never needed for that purpose but I still wear it as if it was……..

My jewellery box is memories and, I have to say, is used to make sure each piece is worn with the right outfit.

Not all of my jewellery is ‘real’.

I have this necklace bought in Accesorize way back when.

It has large amethysts, small diamonds and pearls ( no, of course not real) and it decorates your décolletage, as they said in Brussels.

And when I wore it in Brussels so many people complimented me and ooh’d and ahh’d that I fell into a story.

‘My great great grandmother had to flee Russia just after the revolution and she brought it with her. Almost the only thing she managed to get out. It was sewn into the hem of her dress and though her husband had promised to follow with the rest of the family jewels, he didn’t make it out.

She married a man she met in London when making her living in the East End and said that the necklace would always be passed to the eldest daughter.’

And that, dear reader, was me, as I told a breathless audience of Brussels cocktail party women.

Anyway, just before Christmas I was shopping, as you do, and trying to tick off everything on the list, as you do, when my sis rang me.

She was doing the same, and had had a moment of missing our mum – no one to check the arrangement details with, however frustrating that was now and then.

Mothers leave a very significant mother-shaped hole in your life.

As I was walking back to the car park, laden down ,as you are, and wondering how much time I had left on the car-park ticket, I stopped to look in the window of a second hand jewellery shop.

I  saw an opal ring and went inside.

I waited whilst the rather elderly woman served the previous customer and he was collecting a mended something for his wife of 50 years and they talked about it, and his long marriage.

I was conscious of the time ticking away but I stayed, and when she got to me and asked what I wanted, I got to try on the opal ring.

It fitted exactly, and I explained that I was looking to buy something to remember my mother by – something I could wear that she would have said, ‘ Oh darling that is lovely’ and every time I put it on, I would hear her say that.

‘I am retiring after many years in this business and I like stories of how my jewellery will be worn so let’s halve the price and you will wear that ring and I will think of you wearing it,’ she said.

For once I was not so pleased by the bargain as for the gesture, and I am wearing it, and I hope both she and my mother are pleased.