The freezing fog was down this morning, closing in on me as I looked out the window. The London fog. A pea-souper, as it might have been called in Victorian times. Today last year I put my nightgown on and humbugged to a crowd in Mayfair as part of a Christmas light turning on ceremony, so it’s appropriate that there’s something Dickensian going on in my life, even if it’s only fog.
I stayed in, walled into the flat by the implacable cold, the fog creeping through the gaps in my window, burning too much power in order to run the radiators and keep myself warm. I made some progress though. Better than yesterday.
This ongoing stuff-moving process has many angles. The best one is “Good lord, this thing I don’t like is actually worth money.” Then there’s “Might get a bob or two on eBay, I guess.” Then there’s “Ooh I like this so much I’m keeping it no matter what it’s worth.” But the final category is the hardest one. “This is worth nothing and I don’t like it, but somebody I love once treasured it.” They’re the hard ones to move along. I’m getting better at it though. I might take a box or two to The Battersea Car Boot Sale and flog it all there because this stuff is either too awkward to post or not worth enough for people to pay the postage on top of the item. So long as there’s enough to easily cover the £30 registration fee, and so long as it actually opens through the Covid fun at some point, I’m gonna spend a morning as a barrow boy and hopefully come back a great deal lighter and with a small amount of Christmas money to make up for the fact I’m not on my usual weekly Christmas Scroogegold.
Like leaving the fields to lie fallow, I think it’s going to be an advantage having this time to reflect and to properly look at all this stuff at last. Grief really is a slow process. I can’t quite believe how long it’s been but it seems I’m finally able to look at these things consistently and deal with them without the pain becoming unbearable. By Christmastime this flat will be lovely again, and hopefully sooner – maybe even with carpets and paint. But I’ve got this time to take things slowly and dwell in the happy bits of their memory as I shift and sift the possessions.
AlBarclay 