SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

I am currently sorting through a houseful of ‘stuff’ ahead of a potential move in the next couple of months. De-cluttering is the modern phrase for it. Throwing out crap is what some may prefer to call it.

Fortunately I don’t have much crap, but certainly a lot of stuff that should have been thrown out, re-cycled, donated or sold a long time back. My father had many great qualities, but an ability to get rid of un-needed items or paperwork wasn’t one of them. “You never know when you might need it” was a much used excuse for not off-loading items long past their usefulness.

So far I’m doing well. But it isn’t easy. I’ve managed to be quite purposeful and unsentimental as I know I’m down-sizing and the last thing I want is a new home full of items I won’t need but can’t quite bring myself to throw out. I very much want to start fresh and I don’t want things that will inhibit that.

Admittedly however, letters and photos or general paperwork I haven’t seen before or had forgotten about have brought back memories of loved ones and have tinged my sorting hours with a real melancholy. I will be keeping a very select number of these items and I feel fine with that.

And this got me thinking about the inanimate items that I cherish that I couldn’t discard. Items that have travelled down the years with me, that others may look at and not feel drawn to or know could be ‘up-graded’. Things that may not fit in with the décor but I couldn’t ever consider not being there.

So I tried to narrow it down to 3 but that wasn’t possible. But I could list 5 that felt right, and each one felt essential. Allow me to introduce you to them, in no particular order of importance.  

1.ITALIAN MANDOLIN

The Mariam Webster Dictionary definition of an inanimate object is ‘something that is not alive’. Like a book, a rock, or a chair. It didn’t list a musical instrument, but I imagine that would be considered the same.

If so I’d very much disagree. I believe an object can have a life, maybe even a soul. Take the first object, a mandolin, a family heirloom that I believe carries many mysteries and memories since it was made in Napoli in 1897. One of those mysteries that is unlikely ever to be solved is how we came to have it in the first place. And I’m quite happy not to know, it means I can create my own story around it.

Decorated in mother-of pearl inlays on the sound hole and the fretboard, this instrument was meant to be played, though it hasn’t been in at least sixty years, certainly not since it lost its strings and bridge.

But I love this mandolin, I think of the places it has been to get here in northern England, and those who have played it, and how it may sound. It is a long-held ambition, one hopefully nearing fruition, that I can have it restored and played on one of the recordings of my songs. What a truly wonderful day that will be.

2. CHINESE COFFEE TABLE

I was born in Hong Kong, my father Gordon being stationed there with the RAF along with my mother Jean who joined him not long after his detachment.

To commemorate my birth my parents went into one of the myriad of stalls in the endless back streets of Hong Kong and bought this coffee table. It is engraved with a storyline of Chinese characters along its top.

Like the mandolin it is need of some skilful care from a French polisher and its original glass probably needs replacing. It’s nearing the top of my list of things-to-do. Similar tables are being sold for hundreds of pounds, but given the reason for its purchase, to me it is priceless.

3. PHOTOGRAPH WITH MY SISTERS

Taken in the back room of our then home in Whiston, Merseyside, two of the three of us look cute and adorable. Then there’s me. I was approximately 7 at the time.

My sister Jane would be 4, and my youngest sister Sandra would be 1. I remember the photographer setting up the shot and our parents making us laugh to put us at ease. I think of how young the parents we were looking at would be.

I loved The Beatles and I was just discovering The Rolling Stones. Everything was ahead of us. Good times.

4. YAMAHA ACOUSTIC GUITAR

This quite cheap acoustic guitar was bought at Dawsons Music shop in Warrington, Cheshire during a phase when I had decided I wanted to be a rock god. Once I realised I couldn’t play like Clapton after a month the guitar just kicked around my bedroom for about twenty-five years mostly gathering dust and being periodically moved out of the way.

Then ten years ago when I had put writing to one side while I cared for my father I picked up the guitar again and encouraged by a friend, taught myself four basic, but fundamentally important chords. And I just played them over and over daily for up to twenty minutes at a time, the exercise a sort of therapy away from the daily tensions of being a carer .

Then in 2016 I wrote my first solo song. Nine years later I have fourteen songs on Spotify, have my own YouTube channel and though I don’t have a huge following, my songs written on this guitar have been heard all over the world. I have since up-graded from this guitar, but this is still the one I write on. I consider it a friend and would not discard it for anything.

5. GRAND CANYON MUG

It’s a cheap mug with a mass produced, not particularly detailed illustration of a section of the Grand Canyon on one side. It is titled Grand Canyon in a basic, unimaginative font. No reference to the wonder of the natural phenomenon it represents; there is no ceramic hyperbole here.

But I bought this mug on a mid-October day in 1987 that was the culmination of a 10-year journey from despair when I had no prospects, no money and had lost my mother to cancer only eighteen months earlier. I dreamed of being somewhere, anywhere that was better than where I was, geographically, emotionally and psychologically.

I dreamed of going to the Grand Canyon. It took me a decade of dreaming and saving to get there. Three weeks before I got there I travelled to New York, and took the Greyhound bus across the width of the United States to get to Arizona.

So every time I see this cheap little cup, I remind myself that if I dream large enough, and work hard enough, anything is possible.

There you go then, five items that represent who I am, and each matters deeply to me. They may be quantified as inanimate, but to me they are alive and precious.

But you must have items that mean similar things to you. What would you never part with? What items do you have that others may glance at and never give a second thought to that mean the world to you?