A ceramic object purchased in the final four minutes of a holiday has been installed on a mantelpiece and is now, by common agreement, a family heirloom.

Its purpose has never been established.

“It might be for olives,” said owner Rhoda Kellerman. “It might be a bell. There was a queue.”

Kellerman bought the object at 6:52 a.m. from a departure-gate concession, after realising she had spent eleven days abroad and acquired nothing to prove it.

The Institute for Terminal Decisions reports that the majority of souvenirs are bought in the last one per cent of a trip, at four times the price and one tenth of the consideration.

“The purchase is not a memento,” said Dr. Barnaby Ives. “It is an alibi.”

The object was wrapped in a newspaper Kellerman cannot read, which she has kept, and which has itself become part of the heirloom.

Institute research indicates such items cannot be discarded by the purchaser, only by a descendant, who will do so immediately and without ceremony.

Kellerman’s daughter has already identified it as the first thing to go.