Describe something valuable you lost

I'm going to talk about a silver ring that I lost last summer. It was not very expensive, maybe a few thousand pounds, but for me it was very valuable because my grandmother gave it to me after I finished the secondary school. It belonged to my grandfather before, and it had his initials inside it.

I lost it in Ain Sokhna, it's a beach town near Cairo. I went there with my friends for a weekend. We were playing volleyball on the beach and I didn't want to damage the ring, so I take it off and wrap it in a paper napkin and put it next to our bags. Later my friend cleaned our place and he threw all the napkins into the rubbish, and the ring also.

When I realised, it was already night. I felt very panic. We took a torch and we searched in the sand for maybe two hours, and next morning I asked the hotel cleaners to let me look on the big bins. I also posted a message in a group for the town on Facebook, but nobody answered me.

I felt really guilty, especially when I must tell my grandmother. But she was very kind. She said the memory is more important than the silver. Still, I feel sad when I think about it.

Something valuable I lost, and I still feel a bit sick when I think about it, was a silver ring my grandmother gave me when I finished secondary school. It had belonged to my grandfather and it had his initials engraved on the inside, so although it wasn't worth much money, it was irreplaceable to me.

It happened last summer in Ain Sokhna, a seaside town about two hours from Cairo. I was there for the weekend with some friends from university, and before we started playing volleyball on the beach, I took the ring off because I was worried I'd scratch it. Stupidly, I wrapped it in a paper napkin and left it on top of my bag. While we were playing, one of my friends tidied up our spot and threw away all our rubbish, including, of course, the napkin.

I didn't notice until that evening, and by then it was dark. We went back down with our phone torches and combed through the sand for couple of hours, and the next morning I persuaded the hotel staff to let me go through the beach bins. I also put a post on a local community page, just in case someone had found it, but nothing ever came of it.

Honestly, the worst part was the guilt, and having to tell my grandmother. I'd been dreading it, but she took it remarkably well. She told me it was only metal and that my grandfather wouldn't want me upset over it, which helped, although I still check my pockets about ten times whenever I go anywhere now.

The thing I lost that mattered most to me was a plain silver ring. My grandmother gave it to me the summer I left secondary school; it had been my grandfather's, and his initials were still engraved inside the band, worn almost smooth after forty years. In terms of money it was worth very little, but sentimentally it was the most precious thing I owned.

I lost it through sheer carelessness. A group of us had driven down to Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea for a long weekend, and before a game of beach volleyball I slipped it off so it wouldn't get scratched. Rather than putting it somewhere sensible, I wrapped it in a napkin and tucked it under my towel. At some point a friend, trying to be helpful, gathered up all our rubbish and binned it, napkin and all.

It didn't dawn on me until after dinner. I went straight back with a torch and sifted through the sand until well past midnight, and at dawn I talked one of the cleaners into letting me rummage through the beach bins, which was about as unglamorous as it sounds. I even posted a description on the town's community page in case anyone had picked it up. Nothing turned up.

What I felt, more than anything, was guilt, as though I'd somehow let my grandfather down. Breaking the news to my grandmother was the part I'd been dreading, and she was wonderfully matter-of-fact about it: she said he'd have laughed at the whole thing. That softened the blow, but I've never quite shaken off the feeling.