What to put in a time capsule?

Hello, people of the future.

That's the opening line from our time capsule letter that was buried in the Living Room fireplace on Christmas Eve, 2015.

That was yesterday, for those of you who have indulged in too many chocolate liqueurs after dinner. Merry Christmas and all that. I'm writing this so I can avoid Strictly, Corrie, EmmyFarmy and Downty at my parents' house. It's a never-ending assault of terrible telly. Dawn's with her folks 200-odd miles away. We haven't spent a single December 25 together since we met and our own Christmas Day is always on the 27th.
A little bit of seasonal trivia for you, there.

I'm digressing already.
The only people who will get to read the rest of the 24-page time capsule letter - including 3,271 words, 27 photos and 10 blog screenshots - might not have even been born yet, which is a strange concept to get your head around. So if you want to read it, you'll need to buy The Lodge first.

I'll miss that hat, but he's in a better place now :(

I mentioned this briefly a little while back, but having dug out the fireplace only to find nothing but sand, rubble and actual foundations, such as they are, we decided that because this was likely to be the focal point for the house for a very long time it made sense that we should hide something secret and meaningful there, to be discovered in 25, 50 or even 100 years from now. Who knows?

Because it's entirely possible that Dawn and I will be long gone by the time the letter sees the light of day again, we spent a couple of weeks working out exactly what should be in it. If we had discovered something similar ourselves, what would we want it to tell us?

So it details who we are; when and where we were born; a breakdown of our families; our circumstances; what we're doing to The Lodge; why we're doing it; what our plans are for the place; the history that we know of so far; what's happening in the world at the minute... and loads of other stuff.

It mentions a variety of things from Star Wars to hoverpants (my prediction of the future) and Donald Trump's hair-do, but the one thing I forgot to put in it was how much we actually bought the property for. I guess they'll have to do some research.

Toodle pip, chaps.
Please don't rot.

The omission would be okay if it wasn't for the fact that I sealed the letter in an airtight plastic tub, gaffa taped it to within an inch of its life and buried it under bricks, gravel and sand. Inside, future readers will also find a shiny 2015 pound coin and a 64Gb memory stick holding an electronic version of the letter, all 2,000+ full-sized photos of our Lodge journey so far, loads of albums that we currently listen to and some movie trailers that were released in 2015, among them Mad Max: Fury Road and Southpaw.
I wanted to fill the stick...

Not content with that little lot I also bought Christmas Eve editions of The Times and the local weekly paper and buried them in a heavily taped-up plastic bag together with the Christmas TV Times because everyone wants to know what's on the box at this time of year.

When I first dug it out the muck beneath was at
100% humidity, which doesn't bode too well

I then chucked in a pair of holey rigger gloves that I had been wearing out and my work hat that I knackered a few weeks ago. I also included our very first Christmas card of 2015 - because it features on one of the photos we've included, and the oddly banana-shaped Bic pen that I used to scribble some prophetic lottery numbers on the back of the letter. Oh, and some silica gel packets that we found - for any moisture, not that they'll do much.

I think that's everything. It's not easy choosing stuff for a time capsule, you know.

Our beautiful new slate hearth, which we collected a day earlier, will be set in lime screed on top of the sand in the next week-or-so followed by the log-burner, which we also have waiting to go in.

After that, to all intents and purposes, our little slice of history will be lost...

...until one day...

It's a pretty weird feeling. I hope we've done it right.

EDIT - 27.12.15
The fireplace now appears to have been adopted by SausageTheCat as his lavvy. He's in the doghouse.