Frugal London souvenirs: Better to think “artifacts”

Frugal London likes to think of souvenirs as artifacts of a travel experience.

The artifacts approach favors gathering two kinds of things that help us remember London. One type is artifacts with a practical purpose: boarding passes, ticket stubs, currency and receipts. The other type is artifacts that mark interactions, experiences and insights: menus, museum brochures, stuff you found, things people you met gave to you.

Here are artifacts I gathered from recent trips to London:

• A 15-cent copy of a prayer Dr. Samuel Johnson published in 1784: ” … let the residue of my life, whatever it shall be, be passed in true contrition, and diligent obedience.”
• A free, cooper-wire mood ring a sidewalk artisan in Trafalger Square was making (a dozen a minute) and giving to passers by.
• Shards of glazed pottery — the lip of a mug and the cover of a storage pot — uncovered while beachcombing (what Londoners call “mudlarking”) the Thames at low tide.
• An upstart restaurant’s prix-fixe dinner menu offering six courses for about $9.50: “Spiced parsnip soup, Severn and Wye smoked salmon mousse, pork rillettes with cornichon and melba toast, grilled Cornish mackerel with pommes Parmentier and balsamic dressing, Shepherd’s pie, and milk chocolate and hazelnut mille feuille.” Tax included; service extra. The restaurant is no longer in business.
• A lapel button, “Free 239 Shaker,” protesting the incarceration by the U.S. of Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner held at Guantanamo, handed to me by folks staffing a pop up protest table along Northcote Road in Wandsworth.
• A gold and purple silk tie from Harrods, $4.50 at the charity shop Fara, which raises funds for Romanian orphans.
•  A catalog, “Our favourite novels of the past 200 years,” from the bookstore Hatchard’s of Piccadilly, said to be the oldest in the U.K., opened in 1797, and a ballot upon which I can nominate my favorite: To Kill a Mockingbird.
• An egg shaker and a chiquita, which are simple, hand percussion instruments, both for $5 at a school-oriented instrument shop, also on Northcote Road in Wandsworth.
• A receipt from the duty free shop for a liter bottle of Cointreau — at $25 about than half the price in U.S. liquor stores.

Total cost, $34.65.

Store everything in an acid-free art box, about $12 at Amazon. Mark your calendar one year ahead to review the contents, touch the artifacts, relive the experience.