Ruthless Removals

Among the many traits I seem to have inherited from my mother, one is the curse of sentimental attachments to inanimate objects. This is a particularly bad thing to have when you are tasked with clearing out your late parents property. I quickly learned that savage ruthlessness was the order of the day as we (that is my sister Marcia, her boyfriend Paul and myself) had only a week to completely empty the house ready for sale.

With that borne in mind, I found myself throwing objects onto the charity shop/landfill piles that I would normally have clutched to my heart and sighed "oh, I'll hang on to this". Of course I did keep some bits, mainly items of practical use, but being extremely limited to a domestic space of my own meant that even these had to be carefully considered. Certain things that had been in the family for years, such as a large painting that had been in the family home longer than I had, we simply did not want to get rid of. Luckily, my brother Carl took that, otherwise I would have had to rehome it myself. Which would have meant putting it in storage until I got a bigger place of my own.

But the clearing out process proved to be a refreshingly cathartic experience and even revealed some interesting items, mainly those hoarded by mother over the years. We found envelopes containing samples of each of the children's hair from when we were infants (I was so blonde!!) and even a sample of her pet poodles hair, which was somewhat disturbing. We discovered that mother had written poetry and stories and love letters to her dogs (or about her dogs, to be clear on this). Old clothes from when we were small she had hung on to, including a particularly fetching pair of velvety red shorts that I can be seen modelling here that I simply had to keep, even if just to amuse Stu.

Among Dad's belongings, we found a whole collection of oil paintings that he had done at art school, a dissertation on furniture (all hand written and illustrated in ink) and some of his stunning technical drawing work from his days as an illustrator at AERE Harwell - an example of such can be seen here. This work simply couldn't be thrown away and so was distributed among the six children and also to his brother in Portsmouth.

And of course, so many photographs to trawl through... I took most of them back with me and plan to wear my scanner out getting digital copies made of them. May take a while.

The clear out went well and we were left with only large pieces of furniture that the local charity Helen and Douglas House would remove and rehome later. Leaving the house for the last time though was a pretty emotional wrench for us all.

But I found when I returned to my lodgings in Roath, I was still in ruthless clear out mode, and made a start on my own room... oh my god, too many CDs, books, DVDs! And other bits and pieces I have clung onto for no other purpose but reminders of the past, or "I may find that useful one day". No Lancey, no. Time to leave the past behind and move on.

Happy New Year

And rather belated New Year greetings from myself; I do have my reasons for being so tardy though, but that will be the subject of a later blog.

So, 2011...

A year of going up towers and into miniature villages, of sampling Catalan culture and the delights of Dorset, of further exploration of Tantra and an introduction to Reiki, of rediscovering writing and contributing to a charity publication, of camping, wedding parties and getting wasted on tequila slammers, of strikes and other Union action, of tap-dancing and video-making, and of blogging (periodically). And meeting some truly wonderful people along the way.

And the loss of my father and the final link to my home town. But that's another story.

So here's wishing all who read this a happy, healthy and productive 2012. That's what I plan to have anyway!