I enjoy writing, and occasionally seeing my creative writing in print.

This short story (the title of which contains a play on words) was published in issue number 19 of Horizons, a family magazine published simultaneously in the US and Israel, by Targum Press.

It appears under my customary pen name.

Granny's Present

by Eli Chain

When you're eight years old it's essential to have the right pencil-case. When I was eight the right pencil-case was a sort of elongated pyramid of soft plastic, with a metal zip along the top, and it came in plain red or blue. The red one was for girls and the blue one for boys.

One Sunday, when we visited Granny in St John's Wood and she offered to buy me a pencil-case, it was for this one that I asked. Patiently I described its every detail. I even sketched it for her. And I would like the blue one-I explained-not the red one. "Selfridges" in Baker Street was her regular shopping beat-with her pensioner's bus pass and no-one to hurry home to make lunch for. Selfridges, she said, was sure to have it.

The week flew by in a frenzy of anxiety. The next Sunday my new pencil-case was presented to me in a brown paper bag.

My heart missed a beat when I glanced inside the bag, but as far as an eight year old is able I did not allow my face to fall. Gingerly I pulled out the miserable disappointment. It was identical to the pencil-cases my friends had in every detail but one. Instead of being plain red or blue, it was a mottled red and black, embossed all over with an intricate design in gold.

With a smile on my face -- fastened on with pins -- I calmly pointed out to Granny the essential detail she had missed. But I knew it was not her fault. She belonged to a different generation, a different culture, and more hopeless still -- she had shopped in a West End store rather than a bargain basement in Cricklewood. What else could one have expected?

Noticing my disappointment, someone tried to put a different spin on things: "Plain red may be for girls," it was pointed out, "but this is a pencil-case for a prince."

Persuaded or not, I knew I was stuck with it. Too polite to refuse it and too honest to lose it on purpose. I thanked Granny for her gift and her trouble.

I used her pencil-case for years. In high-school, when I needed a larger one, it became an auxiliary. I actually grew to like the pattern.

Years passed.

When I was married and discovered it in one of the boxes of personal effects which arrived at out new flat in Israel it brought a smile to my face. I used it for a while to store my calligraphy pens and quills. Then again it got put away and forgotten.

Again years passed.

I visited Granny on trips to England, and wrote regularly. But suddenly she was gone and I could not attend her funeral. Still, I have plenty of pleasant memories of her calm, regal smile and her gourmet cooking; I have some of her correspondence in my files; my wife has two gorgeous brooches Granny gave her during her lifetime; and her turn of the century Japanese Satsuma bowl adorns a living room shelf.

Dad had the sobering task of sorting through his mother's possessions and then Mum presented me with a few odds and ends: a wristwatch, a handbag for the girls to play with, a letter rack.....

My attention was arrested by the letter rack. It was a cheap 1960's design with four absurd pointy plastic covers at the tips of its splayed metal legs. It was hideous. I wouldn't have given it so much as a second look if I'd come across it in a shop. I was about to make a sarcastic comment about it to Mum, as I held it up derisively, when somehow it struck a chord.

The soft plastic stretched across its faded gilt frame was mottled red and black, embossed all over with an intricate design in gold.

Suddenly I wondered which came first, the pencil-case or the letter rack? She might even have bought them on the same day. Was she aware that we shared the same pattern for so many years? (Maybe she wasn't and wouldn't even have cared if she did.)

I would hardly describe that plastic covered letter rack one of my treasured possessions, but years after my grandmother's passing here it stands in a specially cleared space amid the confusion on my desk -- as much a decoration as a functional item of desktop furniture.