There’s a lot of surplus stuff in the world. You only have to look at any suburban British street on bin day to notice that people throw so much away. I can’t bear to think about it, especially as I’m as guilty as the next person.
When Little Seymour Number One was tiny, I am proud to say that we used washable nappies. They saved us money, and alleviated my conscience slightly. I didn’t really mind the extra washing, but the nappy bin was truly gruesome.
Little Seymour Number Two came along, and we were still keen to incorporate washable nappies into our lives. Sometimes.
Boy Seymour was a winter baby. There was no chance.
And by the time Mini Seymour arrived, I had given in to the conveniences of the twenty-first century and stopped even trying.
But that’s not to say that I don’t care. Now, as we are slowly renovating the Funny Little Bungalow, we are on the lookout for free stuff, and bits and pieces to recycle. Not least because of that puny budget of ours, but also because the more raw materials we can salvage, the less of an impact we will make on the Earth. Which is a bonus.
Last night, Big Seymour returned home with a van full of concrete paving slabs. Huge, they were. They were offered on a free to collect basis from a local selling page, and he was the lucky recipient. This was probably because he has the means and the determination to actually pick the things up. Any lesser mortal would not be able to hump nineteen solid dollops of institutional stone into a van in the dark. Most people wouldn’t want to.
Our garden is long, and at the end of it, there is a shed. A shed that we will soon be living in.
Living in a shed will be bad enough. But having to swim through mud to get there is just adding insult to torture. Hence, we need a path, and free slabs will do nicely, thank you very much.
When Big Seymour got home with said slabs last night, he was tired. And so, whilst the Four Little Seymours were being entertained by some godawful American teen soap opera where child dancers bemoan their emotional troubles in a pseudo-adult manner, I donned some gloves and went out to give the old boy a hand.
Well, thank f*&k for a tail lift on the van, is all I can say. Without such a genius and handy device, I think it would have been next-to-impossible to manoeuvre the nineteen monolithic lumps anywhere. But, after I’d struggled with a few, I got the hang of it, and now, they’re all stacked neatly by the fence.
The most depressing thing about the whole episode was the fact that, even once the nineteen slabs had been processed, Big Seymour announced that there were sixty in total – and he had been offered them all. Hooray! How wonderful! I’m ever so grateful… forty one to go. My poor arms.
But seriously, every little helps. We have amassed quite a motley selection of free stuff, which will all be put to good use at some point. There’s a bath in the garage, along with a set of optics and an air-conditioning unit. We have a fabulous stained glass window, rescued from a railway station near Liverpool on one of Big Seymour’s countrywide forays. And he’s always bringing home wood.
I have friends coming round on Thursday. Some of them haven’t been here before, and I fear all I need to do, when explaining to them which house is ours, is guide them in the direction of the one that most resembles Steptoe’s yard. Or that scene in Labyrinth when the old rubbish lady is waddling around in the tip and ends up in Sarah’s bedroom.
As for the inside, well, I have made my peace with it. It’s never going to be tidy when our weekend pastime of choice is “jumbling”. In fact, the Little Seymours are now so adept at the art of jumbling that the ladies behind the stalls recognise them, and give them things for free. That does rather defeat the goal of learning the value of money, but at least they come home happy.
This evening, as it’s Valentines Day, the Four Little Seymours have shown that they really do rather love each other. Little Seymour Number One wrapped up three tiny trinkets that she handed to her siblings, and even accepted a kiss from Boy Seymour in return for the single chocolate coin she had gifted him with. And lo! She has just presented Big Seymour and I with more gifts – that she had thought about, acquired and wrapped in secret, and all by herself in her favourite store – you guessed it. The Jumble Sale.
Man, I love a jumble sale.
There are times when I become all stressy about the amount of stuff that we have about the place. The things that arrive here are not always things that we can use. And it is usually my job to sort through those items, to try to avoid being buried alive, like Mr Trebus, God rest his soul.
But! I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like a bargain, or a freebie. And so, when Big Seymour manhandled a stainless steel table out of his van just now, presented it to me and wished me a happy Valentine’s Day, I must admit, it brought a smile to my face.
And that’s when I told myself that I didn’t really need the Jean Paul Gaultier scent I’ve been hankering after, anyway.
Because it’s not free.
Far from it.
The End.
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