Radio 4
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About John Peel
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Throwers & Hoarders
Michael Goldfarb and his wife are moving out, moving on - but not until they've had a bit of a dust-up over what's going with them and what's going in the bin (only to be rescued later).
We're moving. Oh, the house isn't on the market yet (and estate agents
please don't try and contact me) There's a bit of maintenance to be attended
to - a coat of paint here and a dollop of plaster there. But the decision
has been made. We've been in the house 11 years. My last full year in New
York I had 11 addresses. Time to go.
Actually its been time to go for a while but I think what kept us in the
house was our memory of the stress of first purchasing property in London. 8
months of weekends schlepping around the unplanned madness that is London.
Then finding a property. The deal falling through two weeks before Christmas.
Being homeless for the holidays, 6 months living on charity in the tiny 2
bedroom flat of a friend in one of the more non-descript parts of London
between Kilburn and the North Circular Road.
My wife and I survived it. Barely. But the lingering memory of the stress -
a visceral thing akin to the memory amputees have of their severed limbs -
has inhibited action. Where will the arguments come from this time: I
wonder. I think I know.
I think the tension will come in the paring down process. The cull of us -
our accumulated stuff in the eleven years we've been in this house - is
already underway. My wife is the Robespierre in this activity … a true
Jacobin. Everything of the ancien regime must go. Never mind that we
haven't a clue where we're moving or what our needs will be once we get
there. Nothing that was old shall survive. I come back from a business trip
and find a stack of books on the floor. Take them up the road to the second
hand book shop and try and flog them, she commands (Stoke Newington, home to
half the book reviewers in Grub Street has three very fine second hand book
shops specializing in unwanted review copies - it's a great deal you get paid
to tell the world the book is wretched and than sell the thing for two quid
at the second hand book store. Kick in fifty p from your own pocket and you
can afford a bevy at one of the 8 drinking establishments that line the six
hundred yards of Church Street between Albion Road and the High Street.)
I surreptitiously go through the stack of books and put half of them back and
keep a poker face when she remarks that we still seem to have too many books
cluttering up the shelves.
We culled clothing the other day. For the fifteenth time she held up an old
pink polka dot tie of mine and asked when it could be binned. That's the tie
I wore at our wedding, it's the only article of clothing left from that day
and I'm not throwing it out. Back to the back of the drawer it went. But
she wants careful monitoring: she culled her own closet without me and when I
came into the bedroom I saw on top of the pile the black bowling shirt … a
real 1950's 100 percent man-made fibre deal with the words clock grill
written on the back of it. It was the very first gift she ever gave me. And
it says something about the aging process that the shirt was hers when we
first met but I could fit into it and because I looked good in it she gave it
to me. I stopped being able to button it about 10 years ago and gave it back
to her.
The clothing thing is becoming a problem. Another sign of middle age is I'm
becoming a textile freak. I travel a lot and in the last year I've got into
the habit of buying native cloth. I brought a dramatically colourful bolt of
cloth back from the Niger River Delta expecting to turn it into a tropical
shirt and trouser outfit. I brought Pendleton blankets back from an Indian
reservation in New Mexico. I returned from a stint reporting in the Middle
East with the full Lawrence of Arabia monty. The problem is I don't actually
use any of the stuff. It sits in drawers or hangs in the closet taking up
space. I am as surprised as my wife by this new form of self-expression:
acquiring cloth and than hiding it. Acquiring being the key. I never had
acquisitive hobbies as a boy or younger man. I never collected stamps or
baseball cards or insects. A peripatetic life is what I wanted and have
always led. But now that I'm middle aged I find that I want to hold on to
things.
That may be the real reason for the inertia in selling up and moving on. The
house has been a good home to us but holding on is counterproductive, as my
wife the Jacobin says. We aren't going to die here … it's time to go.
She is right so we are moving. But I will keep the essence of this house in
my memory's closet and that's a closet that never undergoes spring-cleaning.
Sound familiar? How do you deal with the ebb and flow of material goods in your household? To what lengths have you gone to rescue a favourite item which has been mercilessly thrown out?
Tell us all...
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