One of the easiest ways to begin to create your legacy is to record, write, declaim or otherwise remember a Pocket Memoir.

What’s in a person’s pockets can be revealing.  It may prompt you to revise your usual pocket form and change your ways.  Or it may remind you of something you forgot a long time ago – why you pocket things the way you do, or why you don’t pocket anything.

For most of my life, my pockets have been empty, except for a spare tissue.  In recent years, due to the exigencies of life, that changed entirely.  But the reason why a pickpocket would have been very disappointed in picking my pockets for most of my life is quite simple – I blame it all on Mum. 

Yes, mothers like smooth lines, they like non-stretched clothing, fabrics that retain their spring, or their starchy straightness, their minty-fresh, crease-free, just-ironed sparkle.  Mothers hate disreputable-looking fashion, hanging carelessly as though it’s been pummelled with river rocks, or turned into a carrybag for spuds and carrots.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a clue where our iron lives anymore.  I used to iron hankies, and serviettes.  I ironed everything, and then, one day, I didn’t anymore.  Fabrics changed, I changed, and the iron went into seclusion somewhere in the house.

Why am I telling you all this?  Because empty pockets – they too have their story.  If you feature empty pockets, what’s their story?  Is it your own choice, or a hangover from someone else’s idea of impressive?

Here’s a pocket memoir I recorded for Ridley Scott’s and Kevin McDonald’s film project Life in a Day.  I watched it again recently and realised that what I carry in my pocket now has changed yet again.  And I know that empty pockets are a thing of the past for me.  How about you, grasshopper, what do you have in your pockets, and why?