Not me – I’ve got my zing zing from my diamante. I’ve been poking about in my boxes of treasure from my happy-go-lucky past and found this symbol of joy and sparkle. This amazingly OTT bit of jewellery came from my Southall days. I don’t know what they are called but I know that Asian women wear them when they want to be highly ornamented. I love them.

I bought this one for a few quid in a costume jewellery store in Southall about twenty years ago. They look gorgeous on dark Asian skin but with my pale complexion, next to my skin it looks dull by comparison so I hit on the idea of wearing it over black evening gloves. I used to wear it out regularly in my gothy days when I had dyed jet black hair (crimped into a huge, messy stack on top) and went out clad from head to foot in black with tons of sparkly diamante jewellery of which this was one piece. You see, even now I hanker after some aspects of those days – give me ‘The Lords Of The New Church’ over The Darkness any day. Give me crushed velvet, feather boas, tons of OBVIOUSLY fake jewellery, fishnets and a can of extra hold hairspray any day over ugly hipster trousers made from crimplene, hair ironed so flat it loses all its life, trainers and body piercing any day!

For some reason the piece reminds me of a spider’s web – not just because of the central design but also because of the ‘legs’ that creep down the fingers to the big stones at the tips. I like the metaphor for a spider’s web holding stuff together.

Today it came out of its box for the first time in more than 15 years and it gets exposed to the world tonight. I wanted some zap and sparkle again today to cheer everyone up. I know it’s exactly the sort of picture that gets starburst filters a bad name for delivering OTT images with loads of stars on them but that’s exactly why I chose it. There is a clear synergy between the OTT-ness of the item itself and the filter. The two are made for each other like red wine and cheese in my view. They are so cheery and full of life they make me smile.

So, the third in my series of sparkle photos is dedicated to an item of jewellery from my past that I’m trying to use as a metaphor for the principle of joyful life. It’s funny how I always want to retrench in the past when I think about the fragility of happiness and life. When I think of times of trouble, struggle and difficulties ahead (even though for this occasion those difficulties and struggle are being lived out far, far away in another land and to my friends rather than me) I want to feel as though I lived my life to the full and that I seized my chances for happiness and fun everywhere and in every situation. I’ve not achieved that (has anyone?) but I am mindful of it and keep trying to find that balance between what makes me happy and what I have to do.

Sometimes for all of us the grasp on happiness is so fragile that it seems as though it may break. Sometimes it does break. My bracelet (if you can call it that) is fragile – it needed soldering back together before I could get my photo (thanks DM). What does a spider do when the gossamer threads of his web are broken? He gets right out there and threads new ones together to rebuild his web.

I’m blundering about a bit with this today – what I’m really trying to say today to Maureen is think of good times ahead (there will be many) and behind (I’m sure there are lots). Keep on striving to make sure that your web is built to capture those good times and make sure you wrap up your treasure in little parcels of gossamer so they stay with you for ever.

I’m not sure if I got from where I started to where I wanted to end with this……but I think the gist is there!

Oh and as an aside - really needed arms 6" longer for this - it was very hard to stretch out far enough to get the camera to focus!