Above the morning sound of radio 4, I heard noises and voices from beyond the kitchen window. I knew who it was. Friends, who had arranged to tidy and clear the garage. As my physical and mental agility was increasingly being challenged, people have turned to help.
My garage, typical of a somewhat decadent ‘50s construction. Built in brick to house a pair of vehicles, gabled with a substantial tiled roof, it was somewhat instrumental to our selecting the place to live, about twenty-five years ago. It housed my race-car partnered with its trailer and provided a good space for working. The separate house in its grounds was OK too, and later the adopted village community proved a great benefit.
The car is long gone, leaving a space for useful storage and the less considered dumping of much debris from life. The sectional sliding white doors hid the accumulating mass from some guilt!
The ‘team’ worked through the day, punctuated with cups of strong Colombian coffee, Yorkshire tea, and a lunch including a fresh leek and cheese flan from my morning’s oven. Re-organisation, re-distribution and several unbalanced rattling trips to the corporation tip, finally left a heavy dust cloud hanging in the air above the newly brushed, reclaimed, empty concrete floor as the trio left for their homes.
I was alone with a mixture of guilt, of gratitude, and of Theft!
I felt an acute loss, the shell of the garage echoing to the missing familiars, a crime scene? I had been cleaned out, robbed of my possessions, they suddenly adopted a heightened value in their absence!
The rusty 1/2” spanner metaphorically wrested from my grip where it had effectively tightened the flexing suspension which once circuited Druids at the Brands Hatch race track.
The lead weights essential to balance the car running over 125mph toward the famed Eau Rouge at Spa Francochamp.
A pitted cement trowel used to smooth many a floor of the barn-conversion I made near Newark, hidden now under carpets but still a man-made structure.
Those acts of making, mending and holding, very much part of my previous life. The ‘theft’, had left a vacancy, materially empty, as though something of importance to me was no longer available, no longer of import, no longer a valid part of my life? Empty? Forgotten?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon the French Politician was quoted in 1840 that “Property is Theft!”
My reaction to this clearance was ludicrous, I was mourning some loss, a more complex emotion, employing mere physical symbols to hold a lost partner, grieving for lost times and experiences together.
But memories are more resilient. Experiences more enduring than a rotting timber, a crumbling brick or a rusting, piece of iron. A cathartic cleansing? A new start?
True friendship, support and caring action is much more important than mere property.
Thank you to my friends.