For many of us over Christmas this year, we’re not able to travel to see loved ones. There are very good reasons for this of course – keeping the level of the virus in our communities as low as we can is the best way to protect those who are most vulnerable in society – but that doesn’t make it any easier.

 

It made me think of a conversation I had at the museum with a visitor not long before the first lockdown – he was originally from Libya and missed the seashells of his home country. He’d brought his British-born children to Manchester Museum to look at our world-class shell collection and was so pleased to find species he recognised among the large, colourful shells on display.

 

He talked to me about his childhood. He and his friends would spend their days on the beach, finding shells and becoming so familiar with them that there would be a little competition every day – different species would earn you different amounts of points, with the rarest and most beautiful shell you could find being the one that let you ‘win’. Spending every day on the beach, he had a strong emotional bond with the shells he used to see and find.

 

He told me that he took his children to the beach in England, to try and find some shells the way he had in his childhood and found that the shells were very different – they were small, not brightly coloured, and of species that he did not recognise.

 

Coming into the museum let him talk to his children about some of the shells he used to know. This is something I have seen so often in the museum – people come in and find objects they can't see anywhere else, that they can talk about with their loved ones, a little connection to what they love.

 

I also have a strong connection to shells. My family likes to gather on a particular beach (known as ‘Sandy Beach’) in Wales for our holidays, and our pastime is always the same – a competition to see who can find the most cowrie shells. These were the favourite shells of my auntie, who died when she was only 9 years old. She had spent every summer with the family on that same beach and would spend all day combing the beach for these uncommon shells. So now, so many years later the whole family carries on that tradition. For me, there’s no better reminder of good times with family, and of home.

 

So, whenever I see other cowrie shells in the museum – usually different species, but the same distinctive pasta-shell shape – I always smile. It’s nice to find a reminder of home and the people that are important to me, and I know that many others find this same comfort, too.

 

Have a lovely Christmas, wherever you are spending it!

 

Bryony Rigby

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Title image: Tiger Cowrie shells from the Indo-Pacific region (source)