Welcome to the Real World!

I've heard more than once that it's the most stressful time of your life.  While I can think of other times that would compete, and against which the outcome would be close, it was something that I've always fought strongly against.  In case you hadn't guessed, I'm talking about moving home.  When the subject has come in recent years, I've looked around my cosy flat, recalled similar occasions in the past when circumstances had forced a move upon me and said a firm 'NO!'

But this firm resolve dissolved on the morning of Easter Monday, when a force outside of me - I believe it was God, but I realise that some readers may attribute to it some other explanation - told me that, with so many facets of my life in the First Garden City coming to an end in the last year or so, it was time to move on.  Almost immediately, I began to pack, and started scouring the internet property sites for the 'right' place into which to move.

I wrote here the other week about instances when I've found it necessary to 'squirrel down' into a strange place, to make myself comfortable in a small area and gradually advance the 'frontier'.  Now the reverse became the order of the day.  In a short space of time, packing boxes - both filled and waiting to be assembled and filled - invaded what had been a pleasant and tranquil space.  Overnight, it seemed, my whole life had to be lived in approximately half the space I'd been used to, and many aspects of what had been normality were curtailed or distorted by the amount of 'stuff' that was now inaccessible, behind a barrier of cardboard and parcel tape.

Surrounded by the ghostly appearance of empty bookshelves, I found in some of these temporary resting places for just a few folders labelled 'shredding', 'filing', 'change of address reminders' and so on, along with other things in daily use whose usual homes have been stripped.  The clock that was suspended by my desk is now propped insecurely on one of these shelves and has managed to topple from thence a couple of times, mercifully without upset.

Finally, through a series of external forces, I have found a suitable new home to rent (by 'new home', of course, I don't mean newly-built but new to me ... it's getting on for a hundred years old!).  The blossom trees, open car park and grass that surround me at present will shortly be replaced by terraced houses, and streets of the same filled with unfamiliar faces.  New contacts will have to be made, and a new accent will have to be coped with.  People will be asked to repeat themselves so that I can understand them.  It will all seem very foreign to this erstwhile country boy who has become very 'home counties orientated' in the last quarter-century.

Writing this just ten days before moving, I have to say that the processes of transferring myself from one address to another - processes that, I realise, are as yet only about half-completed, if that - have been far from easy.  So much is done on line these days, which often makes it simpler, but explaining what you want done doesn't always fit precisely into those 'FAQ' lists or, for that matter, into conversation with a robot in an on-line chat facility.  To my surprise, the other day, one of these actually understood 'Can I speak to a person?' and responded, 'Please wait while I transfer you to an agent'.

It will all get worse before it gets better, I'm sure, and I may be so exhausted that there is no blog next weekend.  (Please don't be so unkind as to cheer all at once!)  But the warmest of farewells at work today have assured me that there will be 'sunlit uplands' once I've overcome the strangeness of a new location and settled in.

The present discomforts - both physical and mental -  and the prospect of more to come remind me of the plight of those refugees I wrote about last week, and the fact that many of them don't have sunlit uplands to look forward to.

When Disaster Strikes ...

 I was thinking the other day about the diverse range of my interests.  Unlike some folks, I'm not the sort of person who delights in absolutely everything about one particular topic ... to the exclusion of all else; rather I have developed many specific interests within a number of broad and quite diverse spheres.  One interest, amidst a general liking for history, is war.  As you might imagine from the foregoing, that's not an interest in just any or every war but, specifically, the two World Wars of the last century.

I venture to suggest that this is for two main reasons.  Firstly, I'm old enough to have gone to school when, it was said, 'History ended in 1914', leaving a big gap between that point and the present day, which I've tried to fill since the end of formal education.  The second reason is that, as my increased awareness of my wider family has developed in more recent years, I've discovered more and more uncles and distant cousins whose young lives were cut short by one or other of these conflicts.

I'll give you a multiple example of this interest.  Prominent in a park in my present home town, is a particular oak tree, beside which is this grey plaque, recording that it was a gift 'in grateful recognition of the generous hospitality received by by Belgians during the Great War'.  The plaque was re-positioned in a refurbishment about ten years ago.

When making a delivery to Milford Haven three years earlier, I had taken a picture of the only other memorial I've seen in the same cause.  This obelisk, prominently situated at a road junction in the town centre, is 'erected by Steam Trawler Owners and People of Ostend who were resident in this town during the Great War'.

The reasons why wars happen are many, varied and complex and an analysis of these would demand more than the few paragraphs this blog affords ... and a greater intellectual prowess than mine to do them justice.  Two of the most likely, however, are greed and fear.  If one country sees that a neighbour is sitting on a rich vein of mineral deposits, for example, and is neither exploiting these for commercial use and the good of all, nor strong enough to prevent others doing so for their own benefit, then an invasion might ensue.  Fear can involve threats of many kinds, either real or implied: oppression, invasion, denial of individual or commercial rights, or restrictions to the free passage of essential services such as oil, gas or electricity.

Once war has erupted, it's usually the civilian population who suffers most.  Of course, the deepest suffering is death but, for those who survive, the lives they were living before conflict came will have been severely disrupted, if not totally impossible.  For these, there are two choices.  Either they can hunker down and make the best of the awful situation they find themselves in - sometimes the only option available - or they can gather together what remains of their former lives and escape to another land ... in other words, become refugees.

We have seen many such unfortunates on our screens in recent years, and thousands have perished while trying to find that place of safety.  In past ages, many found respite on our shores - witness those memorials and, in later times, the Kindertransport operation - and the fact that this has also been the case more recently was brought to my attention last weekend when I learned that a radio presenter to whose programme I listen to every week, Beverley Humphreys, has been awarded the MBE partly for her services to 'Community Cohesion', i.e. work that she has been involved in with Syrian refugees.

What a shame we have a Home Secretary now, whose policies seem to be the direct opposite of that humanitarian welcome to refugees that has been a national characteristic of this country for centuries.

There's no Place Like ...

I'm sure my readers will not need the traditional three guesses to complete the well-known phrase that forms my title this week.  It was a hard fought choice, competing against 'Home, Sweet Home' and 'Home is where the Heart is'.  The origin of this last is said to be in 1820's America, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that it stems not from 'the heart' (indicating love) but, far earlier, from 'the hearth' (meaning light, warmth and energy, without which primitive peoples couldn't do without.

One way or another, my thoughts in recent weeks have focused on this idea of home.  A few weeks ago I wrote here about a 'new' book that now graces my bedside after several years of waiting in the wings.  I won't be a plot spoiler for any who might want to follow me through the pages of Howard Spring's "The Houses in Between" but suffice to say that the action of the story takes place against the background offered by a variety of different households, ranging from luxury flats and houses in inner London and a country mansion with an army of servants, through a small cottage in its grounds and a labourer's cottage built in the corner of a field, to the squalor of slums where a family is accommodated in two or three rooms with the barest stick of furniture with which to survive.  The vivid description of these in the book is an art form of itself.

So I've been prompted to recall some instances from my own life.  I grew up in a typical council house.  Ours was one of a small cluster specially designed for (but not strictly limited in their occupation to) farm workers - a breed who, perhaps fifty or sixty years earlier, had been known for the size of their families - and as a result included three generously proportioned bedrooms.  Growing up as an only child, it was thus an accepted fact of life that there was a 'spare' bedroom that I was forbidden to enter.  The reason for this ban, I later discovered, was that therein were stored family trinkets, mementoes and heirlooms, which meddlesome three- and four-year-old fingers could potentially destroy in all innocence.

By contrast, my first dwelling as a married man was a small flat, one of two converted from a semi-detached town house.  I well remember the first social visit by a school friend who, in the midst of conversation, suddenly turned her head and asked 'what was that?'  She had heard the sound of the fridge, which lived in the corner of the lounge, since the kitchen area was too small to accommodate it.  Even after just a few weeks living there, its sound had become to us part of the background and was unnoticed.

On reflection, I now realise that, wherever I've lived - be it permanent or only temporary - I've always gone through a process of 'expanding my boundaries'; sometimes it has lasted only a few hours, in other instances, a week or more.  About twenty-five years ago, I was asked to spend a week or so in the home of my boss's son in Florida, to do some work for him.  On the day of my arrival I had been welcomed, shown the kitchen and told, 'there's tea and coffee in there, help yourself.'  The kitchen of a single man living alone was not the same as that of an older divorcé with a history of domestication behind him (however loosely this influenced - or didn't - his present behaviour).  I remember my hesitation in selecting a cup and spoon with which to operate, and the contrast between this and my confident use of the kitchen just days later.

On another occasion, my family and I moved into a different town and I recall, during the first few weeks that we lived there, feeling very much that this was a 'holiday home' as I walked around the estate to the small general store just two streets away.  It was some while before this frequent walk became part of the 'home scene'.

Rather like the fridge in our newly-married home, one aspect of living in a bespoke block of flats, as I do now, is the cacophony of slamming doors, echoing voices on empty staircases and the clanging of something hard hitting against the metal banisters.  Talking of 'neighbour noises',  there was the time, nearly forty years ago, when I lived in a terraced cottage.  One day, I met my next-door neighbour in town.  That was the first time we had actually conversed, for my back door faced that of the neighbour on the opposite side of my home.  She remarked on this fact as she explained that she would shortly be moving away ... that we should finally speak to each other after sleeping just a foot apart for the last five years!  For all that proximity, I believe the only time I heard any sound through the bedroom wall was a solitary occasion when she and her husband were arguing in bed.

Terraces and flats have this in common, for party walls are part of the structure of both, although the more modern the build, the better they are insulated.  This is something to which I shall shortly have to re-adjust, for I'm in the process of moving to a much older terrace than the flat where I presently dwell.  It will be interesting to compare the noise level there to what I've become accustomed to here.  One thing, however, is indisputable.  After that time of adjustment, and the expansion of my boundaries, home will still be home.

In Praise of Charity

As many of my readers are aware, I spend two days a week working at the distribution warehouse for our local hospice.  As part of a team of seven or eight, my time is spent trying to sell books, CDs and DVDs on line, just one strand in a complex body that, in conjunction with a chain of a dozen or so high street shops is focused solely on raising funds to help run the hospice, which serves a wide area across parts of two or three counties.

Our small team is comprised totally of volunteers, which means that what we raise is almost entirely cost-free and virtually all of that amount - several thousand pounds in a year - goes to the important work of the hospice itself.  We are the last level of attack before these items leave our hands.  Before they come to us, they are scrutinised by knowledgeable connoisseurs, who are able to divert rare or collectable items into channels where the most money can be made.  Next, items are offered to the shops, and displayed for sale to customers on the high street.  What can't be sold in a reasonable time is returned to the warehouse, either to go to a different shop for a while, or to come to us.  What we are unable to sell is disposed of for recycling; nothing is wasted.

One of the bonuses to someone like me of working in this system is that my tastes don't mirror the average and often I find something that can't be sold is of interest to me, which means that I can buy it at a price just a fraction higher than what would be offered on line if those organisations had been interested.  I've lost count of the number of things I've obtained in that way over the last three years.

Charity is not confined to charitable organisations (like the hospice), of course.  The word derives its origin from the Latin caritas, meaning love, and love comes in a variety of shapes and guises (Groan! - sorry for the pun there.)  One demonstration of love is giving something without the anticipation of either reward or something in return.  And giving something under such terms to someone completely unknown is the basic premise on which is founded an operation formerly known as Freecycle ... passing on something unwanted to someone who can use it, instead of dumping it and letting it end up as landfill.  Freecycle has now been merged with another similar operation and is found on line under the name 'Trash Nothing' (www.trashnothing.com).

I been a follower of this operation for ten years or so, I think and, as with the hospice warehouse, I've lost track of the number of ways I've benefited, from two replacement desks to a number of laptop bags, to a drawer-divan to a complete set of bed linen ... and all for the simple outlay of the fuel to collect  them!  As an illustration, take the history of the desk I'm sitting at as I type this blog.

When I moved here twenty years ago a desk - considered to be essential to my way of life - was bought from a second-hand shop.  After a number of years, I decided that it took up too much space in my room, so I 'disposed of it' on Freecycle, and in the same way obtained a standard 'computer desk', which I quickly realised was too small for my needs.  This I offered on Freecycle and the offer led to an exchange of e-mails with a young lady in the next town, the result of which was an exchange favourable to us both.  She got the computer desk, which fitted the 'bedroom-study' she occupied in her parents' house, and I gained a proper desk that was smaller than the one I'd disposed of just weeks before.

A few years later, another furniture reshuffle led me to realise that I could easily survive without a proper desk, provided I had a 'pedestal': a set of drawers on top of which I could place my printer.  A pedestal happened then to be available at the warehouse for a small outlay and I could then dispose of the desk.  This done, I set up my laptop on a side table that I'd had all along and realised was under-utilised thereunto.  

And that's how things stayed until about two months ago, when I spotted (on Freecycle again) a 'desk-top'.  I was inspired to go and look at it.  It was, as described, a bit scruffy on top, having suffered some kind of paint spillage, but the underside - apart from a score of screw holes where the legs had been fitted - was immaculate!  It now sits astride the pedestal and the side-table (with an unseen sliver of hardboard levelling up the slight difference in their heights) and I now have a desk-sized desk, without the usual encroachment on my room-space, and still absorbing the space that the side-table would require!

As a footnote ... one afternoon this week I was privileged to enjoy the loving offer of another local gent.  He had posted 'Llyfrau Cymraeg' (which, as we all know, means 'Welsh books').  As a lover of books and a student of Welsh, how could I refuse?  I collected a neat box containing no less than sixteen volumes of various sizes, some about Wales, some in Welsh, some virtually new, some old and well-thumbed, some fictional, some grammatical aids to learning the language.  What could be so useful, and on so broad a front?  I told him my sincere 'Diolch yn fawr' and hurried home to explore my great good fortune.