Glasses, Cardigans and One Very Odd Arm: A Root Through the Con Club's Lost Property Box

Every club has its treasures. The trophies in the cabinet. the old photographs behind the bar. The 1958 opening certificate that's faded to the colour of weak tea. But Mirfield Con Club has one collection that never makes the anniversary displays, and frankly, that's a shame.

I'm talking about the lost property box.

It lives behind the bar, in the corner near the cellar hatch, and it has been quietly filling up since roughly the same decade we got our first colour telly. Last Tuesday, with the committee's blessing and a pair of rubber gloves, I finally tipped it out onto the snooker room table to see what six decades of forgetful members have left behind.

The Usual Suspects

Let's start with the ordinary, because even the ordinary tells a story. There are eleven pairs of reading glasses in that box. Eleven. That's not carelessness — that's a portrait of a membership that's getting on a bit, popping specs on to read the bingo sheet, then shoving them in a coat pocket that turns out to have a hole in it.

There are umbrellas of every vintage, including one that must date back to the seventies based on the wooden handle alone. There are single gloves — never pairs, always singles — two scarves, and a woolly hat that still has a tag from a garden centre in Dewsbury that closed in 2003.

And there are keys. So many keys. If any member has been unable to open their shed since roughly 2011, pop in and have a look. Your answers are behind the bar.

The Coats That Never Went Home

The coat situation deserves its own paragraph. Currently in residence: a tan mac that's at least thirty years old, a high-vis jacket with no name in it (we've checked, twice, and held it up at three separate meat draws), and what our Margaret describes as "a walking jacket," by which she means one of those fleecy zip-up numbers designed for striding over the moors rather than striding to the bar.

The mac is the intriguing one. It's been in that box for as long as anyone can remember, and it's reached the point where claiming it would be almost suspicious. If it's yours, we'll want an explanation. A good one.

The Arm. Yes, the Arm.

Now we come to it. The item that stopped three committee members mid-sentence on Tuesday night: a prosthetic arm, resting peacefully beneath the umbrellas like it had simply popped out for a half of bitter.

Nobody knows whose it is. Nobody has reported it missing. It has been in the box long enough that it's become furniture — new bar staff are introduced to it the way you'd introduce them to a regular. We've nicknamed it Arthur. Arthur is, we'd like to stress, welcome to stay as long as he likes, but if his owner is out there and missing him, please come forward. Discreetly. No questions asked. Well, one question.

What the Box Says About Us

Here's the thing I didn't expect when I started rummaging: the box is a social history of the club. The cigarette lighters from the days you could smoke indoors. A Walkman (a WALKMAN) that somebody presumably mourned for a week then replaced. A toy tractor, because at some point a grandchild came to a family do and left without their most important possession.

Cheap things get reclaimed within days. It's the sentimental stuff that lingers — the glasses that cost a fiver but took a decade to get the prescription right, the hat that belonged to a late husband. That's why we keep the box rather than binning it. Somebody, somewhere, misses every item in there.

Where the Box Lives and How to Claim

Practicalities, then. The lost property box sits behind the bar, left of the till, in a cardboard box that once held whisky miniatures. Ask any committee member or whoever's on the bar and they'll happily let you have a root through.

We're planning a Lost Property Open Evening next month — all items laid out on the snooker tables like a very sad jumble sale, tea and biscuits provided, Arthur presiding. Keep an eye on the What's On board for the date.

Until then, if you've come home from the Con Club minus a jacket, a pair of specs, or — incredibly — an arm, you know where we are. The kettle's on and the box is full.