JILL WILL NEVER LOSE THE PLOT

Bishop’s Waltham’s grandmother normally has about 4 books on the go but is never short of a bookmark – she has over 1,000 of them! So many that she recently put them on show at a local church hall and raised £515 for the Rainbow Trust, a charity that supports families who have a child with a life threatening or terminal illness. It took seven people five hours to set up the exhibition. Up to then they had been tucked away in a big box.

Her quirky hobby began more than 40 years ago. She never set out to collect bookmarks but said: “When my children went on school trips they would buy me bookmarks with their pocket money.”

Her bookmark collection mushroomed as friends and family started bringing back bookmarks from their travels.

They have come from far flung corners of the globe including North Korea and Thailand. She gained a bookmark from Egypt after talking to someone at Trafalgar Square.

One of the oddest in the collection is a bookmark made from dried Elephant dung.