Hello again, Nilanthi Jayawardena here, and this is The Shoebox Archive. Today I have taken the train up to Kandy to sit in a small room above a pharmacy with Ruwan Peiris, who has collected matchbox labels since 1978 and now has about 4,000 of them in biscuit tins and proper sleeves. Ruwan has labels from Ceylon match factories that closed before I was born, pen friends in Finland and Japan who still swap with him by post, and one particular label he has chased for 30 years without success. We will talk about how he soaks and presses and stores them, why matchbox labels and not stamps, and who gets the tins one day. His daughter has agreed to join us at the end, and she has opinions. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.