I am in the thick of it, living in two houses and helping my mother to move. Well, not helping as much as doing it for her while she sits in a chair and does breathing.
On Thursday we spent the entire day doing clothing. By the end of the day I had packed two cabin trunks, one suitcase and a garment carrier and filled 10 bin bags with clothes which are now in the Air Ambulance charity shop saving lives. I am going back today for part two and that’s just the clothes.
My mother was a teenager during the war when clothing was rationed and she was the youngest of five. She has made up for it since. Four large wardrobes stuffed to the gunwales. Much of what appeared had not seen the light of day for many years and every single garment had to be exclaimed over and reminisced about. Many items had been worn once, some not at all and every single one was absolutely necessary and had to go with her.
I don’t know how people can work with second hand clothing. I really don’t.
We kept breaking for tea and cake because, of course, she wanted to be there for every decision, even if nearly every decision was ‘take it’. Fortunately one of the things to emerge from the wardrobe was my grandmother’s Lloyd Loom blanket box which will sit on the floor of the new wardrobe and look after the seasonal overspill. Once my mother arrives she will be able to wear a different outfit every day until October without repeating herself and then she can start on the winter clothes. Residents may arrive, live there and leave in a box without seeing her in the same clothes ever. As many of them have memory problems no one is going to know who the Dickens she is.
Madame De Pompadour had much the same ethos. The court of the Sun King was agog every morning to see what she wore and she was reputed never to have done her hair the same way twice. Admittedly this is easier when you’re sticking a ship in full sail in your hair, or a tableau of dressed monkeys playing cards but she did have style. When she knew she was dying she sent for her make-up and kept breathing until she had plastered it on and expired fully rouged.
I would say they don’t make them like that any more, but they do. It’s my mother.
One extremely positive side to this is that my mother is now looking forward to going. She is actually quite excited. The home she is going to has absolutely everything you could need from the fully equipped hairdressing salon where her own hairdresser will meet her every week to the marquee in the garden with cakes and music they are planning for the day after my mother’s birthday which just happens to be their 70th anniversary.
So she’s all right but you might spare a thought for me. The wardrobes are but the tip of the iceberg. In the sitting room two dressers with cupboards and shelves, stuffed, in the house two large bookcases, full, in the bedroom more built-in cupboards chokka block, a person sized freezer, filled. Apparently twenty years ago when my father asked if they should have a large house or a medium one they chose a large house and spent the next twenty years filling it.
After all this is over I am coming home and having the biggest chuck-out in history. Or, to be more accurate, the second biggest chuck-out in history.
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Charity shops here I come.