Accumulated Debris

I moved into a new shoebox flat a few months ago and gradually between late night rinseouts and general prevarication have been exporting the accumulated baggage of the last 10 years of my life away from Prubast’s yard. Fortunately, Prubast has thus far been pretty benevolent about the whole thing, occasionally reminding me that ‘you’ve still got a bit of stuff round at mine’, rather than scooping it into the nearest skip, for the neighbours and wandering Eastern European rag and bone men to pick over.

Still, I have been remiss in getting it out of there and as luck or lack of luck would have it, my room for laziness has run out. Prubast’s mum is applying the pressure for him to move his stuff out of her house and into his, one of his cupboards has gone damp and moldy and these two twin pressures mean that as of last night I was round there stuffing ancient handkerchiefs, flat caps and assorted debris into black sacks.

Half of these 6 black sacks now sit in my new bedroom (the other half are still in the car). I’ve yet to bring myself to root through them and yet I must. At the moment, the room is so full of boxes, bags and potential trip death hazards that I am navigating it by taking a series of short strategic hops – hop to window to close blinds, hop to bed to pass out, stub toe on cupboard, curse, fall back and nearly smash through 19″ old style CRT monitor, but bounce off onto antique battery operated pinball machine. Going through those sacks frightens me. I know that amidst the tat (the majority of the content) unstirred memories from a turbulent time lie. What’s that peaking out of that corner. Ah of course a Commodore 64. What’s that bit of paper? A long lost set of lyrics to a half finished tune. What’s that bright green shell suit top. That’s the thing I wore to the early 90s party. What’s that watch with no battery? Oh, Ninglate got that for me for my 21st.

Strange days, strange fears and no doubt above all far too much hoarding. Yes, it must be faced, mostly got rid of and the best pieces boxed up and sealed for all eternity in the attic archive. Either that or wake up suffocating under a collapsed sack of minidiscs, N64 games and lever arch files. I may have to catalogue the collection for a future post, then burn it in the garden as some kind of cathartic, heathen antic. Most of it certainly can’t be kept.. well apart from the box of lego, the set of Micro Machines, the Keep Harrow Tidy tshirt, the Oasis at knebworth programme, the poems Coybag wrote in GCSE German, the recording of the White Line, the ever growing sneaker library, my Grandad’s boots, the books, DVDs, CDs, rubber ducks, russian dolls, postcards of dinosaurs, the kinder egg toys, the stickers from Stussy, the Yamaha keyboard manual, that painting of sheep I did when I was lean, the beer towel from the Isle of Arran, the collection of hats, amusing bags, monkey related characters, chinese calligraphy set, tennis racket, skittles set, backgammon and travel car games. All these things are essential and I’m starting to think I might be in big trouble….