Downsizing

The recent suggestion that old folk should get out of their larger family homes and move into smaller premises has touched a bit of a raw spot for me and the wife.

The suggestion is that now the children have departed (if, indeed, they have or ever will completely), less space is needed and so we should shift ho, and free up the market for younger souls starting out on the same long trail.

While it is true that fewer bedrooms may be required for sleeping purposes, when you downsize, what do you do with all the stuff you have collected over the years? And then there's the mountain of artefacts your children require you to hang on to for them, 'just in case'. No doubt the same callous spokesperson will tell us to chuck it all out. But it's not that easy. Pretty much everything is not just an object, perhaps no longer used, but a memory.

As I have found, casting the past onto the recycling heap is not as straightforward as loading up the car and heading for the county bin. Which is why I now find myself in a small bungalow with boxes, bags, and unconfinable bits and bobs being moved from room to room like the rotation of crops in a three-field system. Navigating through the domicile is a knee-bruising experience.

Currently in the way is my father's snooker cue. Not just any cue mind, but a Peradon Joe Davis cue from circa 1950 when that immortal player made the then highest break of 146. Not having a snooker table, and no room for even a miniature one, why keep it? Because a single glance is enough to take me back to a freezing cold day in the early '50s, when I was dragged from London down to the immeasurable misery of the rain-swept February front at Herne Bay – where my father was convalescing after having a third of his stomach removed. The memory is all the more poignant for the expression that erupted from my mother's face when my father announced that he had just won a snooker tournament. The burden of my mother's next speech was that if he can win snooker tournaments with his midriff in stitches, he can jolly well get back to work. (Only the gist is recalled as maternal hands were placed firmly over both my ears to muffle the more colourful interpolated language.)

Downsize and get rid of the past? Be careful, one day the past may be all that you have left.