I’ve been tidying out the shed.
To be honest I’m not really a shed person. Certainly not in the ‘Dad’s pottering about in the shed’ sense, nor particularly in the ‘nipping out to the shed for a glass of sherry’ way from inexplicably long-forgotten one-time hit sitcom No Place Like Home. Nevertheless, and despite it not being my natural environment, I’ve been in there, tidying.
I hesitate to say there’s two decades of stuff in there (and by stuff I’m just avoiding the word rubbish) because for long periods of time it was inhabited by rabbits and guinea pigs. Based on yesterday, it’s now inhabited by an awful lot of spiders.
We have four categories of spider here. Small; Large; The sort of thing that did for Jon Pertwee; and We have to move house. The ones I’ve encountered so far have been in the region of a 2/2.5 so not too worrying. My daughter, mainly to be contrary, only has one category which is ‘Kill it with fire’ – and although that’s certainly a point of view, it has absolutely no practical application in terms of distinguishing one from another.
But I digress.
So anyway, I have been tidying out the shed. I found I had wood (stop sniggering at the back there) of all shapes and sizes, including the last remaining arm of an otherwise long-gone settee which I had previously disposed of in instalments via the fortnightly (though back then, weekly) bin collections. There’s also the traditional array of old paint cans, rusty tools, and all the other paraphernalia (and by paraphernalia I’m just avoiding the word stuff) which one might expect.
It’s one of those chores that ticks away at the back of the mind on the basis that sooner or later somebody will have to tidy it up. I’m not getting intimations of mortality or anything like that, I don’t yet seriously worry that my rubbish might outlive me, but because the house isn’t ours, I know that the time will come when it’s somebody else’s, and my successor may not unreasonably expect to have a shed they can use for storing their own worldy goods (and by worldly goods I’m just avoiding the word paraphernalia).
I must admit that even 21 years in, I sometimes feel very aware that it’s not our house. I might moan about cutting the grass (in fact scratch that, I DO moan about cutting the grass) but I wouldn’t ever contemplate taking drastic preventative action and concreting it over – because that would be removing something which at some point should be passed to somebody else.
It was Mrs Thatcher, wasn’t it, who really pushed the concept of converting council house tenants into homeowners? In rather lukewarm defence, I don’t think she originated the scheme, it was already in place – but certainly she was heavily associated with it from the early 80s onwards.
I suppose I can see the appeal (and based on the fact that in our estate of ten, three are privately-owned, I have to assume that at least 30% of tenants were pleased about it) but I’m afraid I feel a stern sense of disapproval wash over me whenever I consider it. As no doubt some opposition political figure will have pointed out at the time, unless you use the sale proceeds to replenish your housing stock, sooner or later you’re going to find you have less houses than you do people who need them.
But I don’t want to come over all political and I’m certainly not bothered about not being a homeowner. Except… if I owned it then the person who inherited the house would probably also inherit whatever was left in the shed and therefore I wouldn’t need to be quite so worried about it. Knowing it’ll be a complete stranger means that I ought to keep it within manageable tolerances.
I can’t, frankly, see much point owning the house because you can’t take it with you – but equally, in the case of the accumulated curios in the shed, you probably should try not to leave it behind you either.
(And by accumulated curios, of course, I’m just avoiding the word c**p).
In case the title is in any way perplexing, it’s just me being pretentious and referencing Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, which I studied at A-Level. It’s a highly-regarded play, a bit like Reggie Perrin but with fewer jokes, and at one point the title character opines that he still feels kind of temporary about himself. I won’t elaborate on where that leads him because that might ruin the ending of it for you – although frankly the title is a bit of a giveaway.
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 