Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia.

Dear Del,

How did a couple of young things who started their lives in a tiny flat with two chairs, a table, a second hand couch and bedroom furniture end up forty six years later with so much stuff?

After packing for weeks and spreading large items of furniture, such as our piano, an old Indian overmantel from my grandparent’s home, coffee tables and bedside units around the countryside amongst family and strangers alike, we still have far to much waiting to be packed.

We’ve made many trips to the local Salvation Army op-shop and yet, because of sentiment or just a particular fondness for some things, we still have enough to fill a very large truck.

So far, there has been little affect on our everyday lives. We can still telephone people, send emails and watch our televisions cook our meals and do all the daily things with hardly a hiccup in the proceedings. So why is it we, and by this I mean so many of us in the world, feel the need to be surrounded by so many objects?

Most of our possessions sit in cupboards undisturbed for months or even years, gradually being affected by the vagaries of weather and time. We keep accumulating objects we like or are given. Occasionally liking and being given coincide.

Some of them I have come to believe procreate in the privacy of our darkened cupboards in the same way the things in the boot of our car increase without any help from us.

We have never been avid shoppers, in fact I rather dislike veering away from my planned sprint through the shopping list to divert into clothing or giftware places. I shop because I have to, not because I want to wander about aimlessly waiting for some assistant to drag her cell phone from her ear and come out from behind her counter to ask me if she can be of help or if I just want to browse. The botanical gardens and plant nurseries are about the only places I can be caught browsing with any enthusiasm.

We seem to be living through a time when shopping has become a national means of entertaining the children during school holidays.

Instead of being told to ‘go out in the yard and play’ as we were. Parents seem to feel they must constantly entertain their offspring by going to every holiday movie that is produced. The standard and content or the escalating costs of the entry tickets don’t appear to be a consideration. They also take them out to the shopping malls to wander aimlessly around the various boutiques and fast food outlets. They drift about disturbing carefully arranged displays in the variety stores and as they become footsore, bored and tired, screw their faces into a variety of heart rending efforts and whinge in a way designed to induce their mothers to spend yet more money on more things.

I have asked my family many times not to give me any more dust collecting gifts, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

So despite the culling we made when we last moved, we still have enough crockery to feed a crowd.

Next week, we shall begin to cut ourselves off from the world as we disconnect our computers and televisions prior to packing them.

If the signals in the hills have not improved since we were there last it could take us some time to get them all tuned into the correct stations again.

It took Teddy almost eighteen months to find our favourite classic music radio station. He walked around the house with his rod and aerial looking like a confused Water Diviner for some time until he at last found the right spot to fix it. Fortunately they stream their programmes on-line now which will make life easier.

We only ever did tune into two television stations because of the large hill in front of our house blocking the signals from the north.Most people use satellite T.V.

There are a couple of valleys where mobile phones are quite useless and it can be a source of amusement for the locals to sit in a pub and watch the frustration of the tourists as they keep trying to dial out.

The last box I packed was to take the Christmas decorations. Now, ordinarily I would have given them away and begun again because we don’t go in for a great deal of Christmas decoration since the children left home. However our daughter gave us a large round wreath for our front door. It has the merry face of Santa complete with gold rimmed glasses, a very long beard and lots of stars and decorative bits and pieces. It weighs quite a lot and is a nightmare to get into any sort of box to pack in a way which will not have him arrive looking dishevelled and sad with his beard and tinsel in disarray. Just another of those things, we would happily do without, but should she arrive for Christmas and Santa isn’t smiling at her from our front door she will be very disappointed. Perhaps we’ll ask them to come for Easter instead.

As a little bit of respite, Teddy has discovered a computer site which gives instructions for making Native American flutes. I wish he hadn’t. But there we are.

It would have been so much better if this particular obsession had not raised its unwelcome head until after we arrived up there and then he could have gone to sit on a mountain far, far away and practice ‘Scarborough Fair’ and ‘Blowing In The Wind’. Individually the notes are lovely; it is the combinations he makes that I am having problems with at the moment. Our spaniel sets up a mournful cry each time he begins and sits looking at him with big round eyes pleading for him to stop.

Oh no, ‘Blowing In The Wind’ is issuing from the shed and Walter the spaniel has joined in.

I used to like that song……. once. To think I’ll have this for a few more months combined with Teddy’s favourite sport, a Federal election as well.

I think I’ll put my boots made for walking on during the next few weeks.

Cheers from the head of the local union of domestic house packing, your ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia