… and I’ve trashed the place.
Every surface. Every inch of floor. Every bit of shelf space. Covered. In. Junk. This time, nobody lives with me – unlike that hot sunny day where the bath was full of busts and Kitcat got home unexpectedly.
But I live with me, and I can’t cook if there are plates on the hob. There’s a corridor carved through the piles from my bedroom to the bathroom in one direction. The bathroom door is held open by a picture of the conquistadors by an early Peruvian artist. The bathroom itself is a haven. Just a cupboard full of empty boxes, but the only room I haven’t filled with things.
There’s a corridor from the bedroom to the kitchen in the other direction. Hex sits proudly on the left atop his box of old music hall scores. He’s been curious about all the movement. Likely he wants to curl up in the boxes.
At the top of the stairs it’s old linen and hats, with pictures lined up all the way down the stairwell and ceramics on every shelf. The block caretaker literally held his hands to his head in mock despair as I arrived once again with four boxes full of God alone knows what.
I’ve got nine boxes of plates selling as a single lot at Tennant’s, because even though there are some good ones and we are locked down, they clearly couldn’t face having to sort them into lots. I’m ok with it though. Nor could I. It makes it easier for me to cheat on them with a London auction house that may or may not behave like William from Chiswick did. I’m hoping they won’t as there’s furniture that needs a van and Yorkshire is a long way. But there’s plenty of junk here too. I don’t want to put them off. There are plates I really shouldn’t have taken to Tennant’s at all, but I didn’t have the space or time to sort them, and I’m sure that their presence helped whoever was sorting them to justify just jobbing them into one huge lazy lot of “dinner wear” (SIC).
I’m learning slowly that plates aren’t as good as people want them to be anyway. Does anybody under the age of 65 have plates on their wall at home? Does anybody over the age of 65 not? It’ll take a generation for them to come back round again into fashion. In 100 years those Victorian plates I sent to Tennants might be worth a wee bit more – but I haven’t got 100 years. And I haven’t got the room to store them for even a week. They might come back to me though, as the sheer size of the lot might put off prospective buyers…
These plates I have here are much worse too. They really are bollocks. The auction guy won’t want to sell them. I’ll have to downplay them when he comes round. Realistically I could be the guest of honour at a Greek wedding.
“Real Old Willow,” some of them proudly proclaim. Because actual real old willow pattern was one of the first regular exports from China back before the Germans worked out how to make porcelain. That stuff is old, and precious. The fact this stuff tries to tell you it’s real just shows it has something to prove – look at the outgoing President’s Twitter handle… And those plates had “old” written on them right off the production line. They should say “fake modern willow”. But at least they’re pretty. Which is more than you can say for the President. But I don’t want to keep them any more than I want to keep him.
It’s half midnight. I’ve eaten nothing but toast all day. My head hurts. But we got things done, Max and I. In the middle of it all, I rushed home, got onto zoom, and did a fifteen minute lecture on the life of Nichiren Daishonin to a bunch of Buddhists in my local area. That was my dinner time. The Tatsunokochi Persecution. No time for eating. Talky talky, listeny listeny, wavey wavey, fuckoffbacktostorage-y.
It’s not done yet, but the end of the storage is in sight!! Good God. The day will come…
That’s because EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS IN MY FLAT.
So next I need to be shifting things hand over fist. All I sold today is a cushion and some Doll’s House accessories. Better than nothing, I guess…
AlBarclay 