I have been having a clear out (almost!)
The new year is a good time for new starts, decluttering your home and your life and moving on unencumbered. But we never do, do we?
Here are just a handful of the things that I have carried with me through my life. They include an old bellows camera that does not work any more, an LP even though I don’t have a record player (and there are more LPs in a box under the bed!), a very very worn out teddy bear, an anthology of poems edited by Walter de la Mere which I have not looked in for many years, a pair of binoculars that might not actually belong to me and, finally, a book given to me by my Dad on my fouteenth birthday back in the last millennium!
All these things and many more I have carried with me down the years. Each time I have moved I have packed them away and brought them with me, unpacked them and placed them on shelves or in cupboards possibly thinking that at some point I really ought to get rid of them. But each time they have stayed connected to me.
It is almost as if objects like these, the ones we can’t throw away, become a part of us and they are as much us as our character, our memories, what we look like.
The question is now that have I photographed them does these images become the objects? Can I now make that trip to the charity shop or the tip (sorry, Teddy!)?
Somehow I think not but I will keep you informed.
