I have been on a little quest for some time now.

It was a simple ambition. I just wanted a lighter for my pipe.

I did have some parameters that needed to be fulfilled. It had to be reasonably sturdy. It had to be refillable. I prefer gas to petrol and prefer flint lighters as they are somewhat easier to repair.

So far I have collected Zippo, Ronson, Peterson, Lotus, Vector and a rake of others whose names escape me. For one reason or another each had to be abandoned. Most of them broke. Some broke physically when bits snapped off. Some broke internally when they just stopped working. Some developed leaks and vanished in a ball of flame when near a spark [quite an impressive sight!]. My latest purchase – the Adorini – was grand but was more suitable for cigarettes or spot welding.

I was doing a job around the house the other day. The job is irrelevant but I was looking for a particular something [something small round and very hard, like a small nut]. When looking for something that is non-specific but needs certain qualities the best place to start looking is of course the Kitchen Drawer.

We all have a Kitchen Drawer. That’s the one where everything gets dumped so it fills up with a load of crap that just may have a use sometime in the future. Old clothes pegs, string, a Christmas Card from 2004, cocktail sticks, you know the score? Anyhows I was rooting around the back of the drawer amongst the old pre-decimal coins, screws and bits of macaroni [?] when I found a lighter. I flicked it. It worked!

The lighter is a Clipper. It’s gas [tick], with a soft flame [tick]. It’s refillable [tick] and uses replaceable flint [tick]. Best of all, if anything goes wrong with it, I can get a new one from Tesco for the princely sum of €1 [Wow!].

I have no idea where it came from. It looks brand new. It does have a strange decoration on it as if it were advertising something. I looked up the clues on the Interwebs and the best I can find is that it possibly had origins in San Francisco. I actually found the exact pattern –

It’s a wee bit annoying that I spent so much time sending off for lighters from various spots on the planet when I had one right under my nose all the time, but that’s life. The one thing you seek is right beside you if you just look.

I bet Daughter is going to claim it as hers.

She can feck off.

It’s MINE now.