The adventures of Lydia Pan…
By Carl Scott
Early on in September 2024 I had a somewhat unusual call from a guest who had stayed aboard Onderneming at Snape Maltings a couple of months previously. She had taken her big saucepan with her and cannot find the lid anywhere. It occurred to her after hunting high and low at home that she may have left it aboard the Barge.
This theory seemed to make even more sense to her when she realised that she had got a lid there that doesn’t belong to her. After much chuckling between us, I said don’t worry I will get it checked out.
Whilst we had what we thought was the lid, I was unable to contact her, because although she’d given me her name, I had assumed she was the guest that had made the booking. However she wasn’t! As a number of days had passed, I had no idea which number in my call list was hers.
The only thing I could do was email all the guests over the previous couple of months and apologise for the random question of “I don’t suppose you had a guest named XXX with you did you?”, along with a brief explanation. I did say don’t worry about contacting me if this was not the case , however pretty much all of them came back to me, which was very nice, to say no but I hope you find her.
A couple of days after that my phone rang and it was the lady in question chasing me up to see if I’d had any luck, which is exactly what I had hoped would happen. I explained that I couldn’t find her name amongst the bookings over the last couple of months, and what I had done. It turns out that she booked last year and came with friends, then the friends booked this year. I simply hadn’t gone far back enough when emailing, the guests that I had. I stopped one short!
I described the lid that I now had in my possession to her, however, this was not the right one!
As luck would have it, I told her I was heading to Snape Maltings that day so I would take a look. She sent me a photo of one of the matching lids this time so I could identify it. I’d better point out at this stage that it was quite an expensive one, and part of a set, hence her wanting to get it back.
When I got to Snape Maltings, we did indeed strike gold this time and the AWOL lid was recovered!
I called her with the good news, as we were now WhatsApp buddies. After lots more laughing, I said that I would send the lid back and that she could do the same with ours, but she said that as she had to come up to Aldeburgh in a few weeks she could do a swap then.
So there we go, all’s well that ends well. Happy ending.
End of story? Of course it’s not the end of the story, this is me we are talking about! This is just where the story begins!
As I had the responsibility of looking after the lid for a couple of weeks, I thought it was only my duty to ensure that I involved it fully in my daily life.
As I casually went about my business with my new friend, I felt it only fitting, and a sign of respect, that she be given a name. I say she, that’s because Lydia was the obvious name. Lydia Pan!
So over the next few days, also I shall be sharing with you ‘The adventures of Lydia Pan’ I can tell you that whilst she misses her rightful owner, she has certainly been on adventures!
Let’s get you started then with a few pics from home…
When she saw all my guitars she wanted to have a go, but they were too big. She settled for the mandolin.
