We’ve all been there. One minute your wallet is in your pocket, the next it has been lost to a parallel universe as if by magic.
Often we give up hope of ever finding a long lost purse, especially after nearly seven decades.
However one man has been reunited with a wallet he dropped accidentally 65 years ago.
Edward Parker was working as an electrician in Lambeth Palace in 1950 when the wallet slipped out of his pocket and fell behind a bookshelf where it stayed until this year when it was uncovered by a builder during a renovation.
Mr Parker, now 89, is living at the Romford Nursing Care Centre in Neave Crescent, Harold Hill, and has dementia.
His wife, Constance, 90, said: “It’s not the money he was worried about losing, it was the memories inside the wallet.”
The wallet contained photos of Mr Parker’s mother, father, brother and cousins as well as a picture with his wife in Eastbourne.
There were also invoices, business cards, union cards, the results of a chest x-ray, receipts, a national service card and a medical insurance card in the wallet.
Lambeth Palace, with the help of the BBC, used this medical insurance card to track Mr Parker down by identifying two places of residence in north London and a marriage certificate in Islington Council from 1947 between Edward Parker and Constance Butler.
Upon receiving the wallet Mr Parker, who struggles with his memory due to the dementia, remembered everything in it.
He was happy to see pictures of people, in particular his father, who he hadn’t seen a photo of since he lost the wallet.
Sandra Bensley, the southern regional manager for Ranc Care Homes, where Mr Parker lives, said: “It’s such a heartwarming story that Edward has got his wallet back after 65 years and the photos that he thought were lost forever are now back in his possession.”
The wallet, now a bit dogged and broken by time, is kept safe by Mrs Parker in their home.
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