That sounds familiar...
Girl loses favourite pop tape on Spanish holiday – only to find it in Swedish gallery 26 years later
WHEN she lost a homemade tape of her favourite pop hits during a Spanish holiday, 12year-old Stella Wedell was convinced she wouldn’t see it again.
But 26 years later she was stunned to come across it – on display in a Swedish art gallery.
The tape, which had been lost in either the Costa Brava or Majorca in 1993, had somehow washed up more than 1,200 miles away in the Canary Islands in 2017. And it still worked.
Artist Mandy Barker, who specialises in photographing marine plastic pollution, found it on a beach in Fuerteventura. Miss Barker, from Leeds, sent the tape to a professional audio restorer. It
‘Hard to say how long it was in the sea’
still played and he was able to list the tracks, which feature on the CD Best Of 93 and include hits by Pet Shop Boys, Shaggy, UB40 and Bob Marley.
She decided to include it in her touring exhibition Sea Of Artefacts. Last summer Miss Wedell, from Berlin, went on holiday to Scandinavia and happened to visit the exhibition while she was in Stockholm. She was astonished to see the rusty cassette on display, alongside a list of tracks to show its age. Miss Barker was equally amazed to receive an email from Miss Wedell to say it was her tape.
Miss Wedell said: ‘When I was reading the track list, it seemed very familiar to me.
‘So I took a picture of it and compared it with the original CD from 1993, which I still have – and it was exactly the same tracklist, but starting with track three. I remember that I didn’t like the first two songs. I always made tapes from my CDs at this time to listen to them with my Walkman.’
Miss Barker said: ‘It was an astounding chance for Stella to walk into my exhibition and recognise her tape.’ She told Professor Richard Thompson, head of the international marine litter research unit at the University of Plymouth.
‘It is very difficult to say exactly how long the tape has been in the sea,’ he said. ‘But the fact it has survived intact shows the durability of plastic and the threat it can pose to the marine environment.’
The tape will continue touring as part of the exhibition, before being returned to Miss Wedell.