The Urge to Purge

Penguin No 8 I found myself telling colleagues about my old autograph book this week. It somehow disappeared when we moved out of our house in Cranbrook in 1971. It really was quite a good'un, with autographs Dad had got for me when working at Pinewood, Elstree etc. It had loads of smashing British actors in it, as well as all four Beatles, Mick Jagger and Tom Jones!  With the advent of selfies etc, autographs seem to have lost ground, but I still treasure a reply I had from Peter Jackson to my appreciative letter posted to New Zealand after the first Lord of the Rings film came out.

When my parents moved to Spain, there was a lot of downsizing needed  after years spent in a big family house with eight children. There was an auction, and most went in job lots, including Grandpa Hayter's library of first editions. I particularly remember a rather beautiful turquoise-covered first edition of Oscar Wilde's Salome. But hey-ho, you can't have everything - where would you put it? And when I regret things gone, I think of my friend Max, who left Europe on a Kindertransport with  a tiny suitcase, and all the other refugees that have existed before and since, forced to leave everything behind.
 
It's good to declutter, but I've learnt to hold my fire when I get into a certain purging frame of mind, and a desire comes over me to throw everything out. I guess the balance is to consider and select only the truly precious things, and to give, sell, or take to the recycling centre a significant portion of the rest. Who would want to end up like the man whose basement, upon his demise, was found to contain a copy of every issue of the Radio Times published during his entire adult life?

Our son is getting married next spring, a significant turning-point for us all, and, looking forwards to the next stage of our lives, we hope to streamline all that stuff stored away in the attic. I never get rid of anything without consulting its owner, but this year finally washed, dried and gave away to the local church's tombola-stall, my son's childhood soft toys (well, most of them!). 

There's still a way to go! William Morris famously said that one should have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. Well, some of the items I've hung on to are lovely to me, but they sit on the shelves year after year lacking attention. Here are a few of them: These four rather beautiful door-handles are from our former home in London. They were made by Wilbec, and are 30s/40s Lucite/Bakelite. 


The cracked mug - Hackney, the 'radical Socialist borough' from where, to some of our friends' amazement, we moved to a village in East Sussex with a Tory MP.


A packet of Co-Operative Society sewing needles from Mam's sewing-box, and others kept on a half-torn ticket from the Coliseum, Trecynon for their production of Mud Diggers in aid of Aberdare Warship Week (I might keep the ticket for my scrapbook!) 

A bottle from the Thomas Niagara Works in Swansea. Thanks to the joys of the internet, I've just found this info about its origins on the web: http://www.jlb2011.co.uk/walespic/archive/000826z.htm

Some things, however, will be staying! My mother has knitted many marvellous things over the years, from Indian Chief cardigans (1960s) to Mr and Mrs Jack Frost (they come out every Christmas), and, especially treasured, my haunted castle pencil-pot.

At moments of crisis, like the illness or death of loved ones, you come to know, again, the truth that love is the most valuable commodity, and all else is passing.

Here's one more William Morris quote from Light from Many Lamps, another 'keeper', one of my favourite books, somewhat tatty now after much use:

"I'm going your way, so let us go hand in hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for soon death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep. Let us help one another while we may."