In the Museum of Lost Chances there are four galleries: Love, Work, Children,

Travel. Each attracts its own particular visitors, come to see what others have missed; to

recognise the chances that have slipped through their own hands and find solace in not being

alone. The Curator greets each one at the door and offers them a printed guide.

In the early days, there were also those who came merely out of curiosity; people who

had not known either loss or regret and only came to gloat. The Curator soon learned to

recognise them as they approached and was quick to turn them away.

By and by, people started bringing their own submissions for the Curator’s

consideration. He took this work seriously, and soon there were queues down the street every

day. The Museum of Lost Chances became famous far and wide.

People brought tokens of their lost lives, little things that represented what they had

wished for or had never had chance of: a box of confetti, a button off a matinee jacket,

postcards - endless postcards and pages torn from magazines showing cityscapes and

mountains and roads never travelled.

The Curator catalogued tools and uniforms, training guides, exam certificates and

ballet shoes, all symbols of careers never begun or ended too soon. His cabinets overflowed

with mementoes of lost loves; penknives that carved initials, fading photographs of

yesteryear and sugar packets from lonely first dates. The display in the gallery of Lost

Chances in Love grew so large that the room had to be knocked through and new cases

installed.

But the centrepiece of the Museum is the Wheel of Circumstance, a work of the

Curator’s own making. Like a great wheel of misfortune, it spins through the forces that

cause lost chances: Timing, Money, Biology, Fear, Ignorance, Obligation. It never judges the

hand that sets it in motion; brute circumstance has already done its worst. The wheel’s only

job is to take away blame.

At night, when the people are gone and the doors are locked, the Curator retires to his

flat upstairs. He drinks a cherry brandy and toasts the wife he never got to marry. He reads a

story to their imaginary children and cooks himself a simple meal. Sometimes as he eats, he

listens to music he never learned to play. More often, he sits in silence methodically sifting

through the sentiments of the day, cataloguing them for a new exhibit he is contemplating:

The Gallery of Found Emotions.

Before bed, the Curator says a prayer in the old-fashioned way, hands folded, eyes

closed. Then he touches the face of his brother’s photograph and says aloud

‘I love you,’ choosing to believe there is still a chance that the brother will somehow

hear.

Then, despite his sorrows, he sleeps well, his conscience clear.

Downstairs in the Museum, the Wheel of Circumstance spins on through the night:

Timing, Money, Biology, Fear, Ignorance, Obligation.