I lost my purse yesterday. It wasn’t in any of its usual hideouts – the bread bin was empty, and the peg bag wasn’t harbouring it either. I drove up to the Little Seymours’ school, disturbed the office ladies and even a lesson or two, by rummaging in bags and holding mini-inquisitions with my children, as I know they have a propensity to “borrow” my money.
My purse was not at school.
I came home, determined to follow the advice we are all given when we lose things, and “retrace my effing steps”. But the sodding purse was not in the toilet, or the greenhouse, or anywhere else I’d stepped that morning. I was starting to believe that Mary Norton might have been on to something, and that her Borrower stories were more than just the fruits of her marvellous imagination.
Swearing and cursing, I glanced at the laundry basket – still as bulging as it was on Monday (only filled with a different load), and muttered to myself that the purse wasn’t going to be in there, for goodness’ sake.
It was. Mingled in amongst the now crunchy garments I’d grabbed off the line the night before was my purse, flung with gay abandon as I tried and failed to multi-task successfully. I had no idea that I’d put it in there.
This absent-mindedness cannot be blamed on Shed Life. It is a consequence of being a scatterbrain – a term I like, but an affliction I don’t, as it’s getting out of control, in my case.
There are many things that have miraculously vanished recently. I can’t for the life of me find any of my jewellery, and all the phone chargers are disappearing. The old lottery tickets that I swear I checked but needed to scan three more times – they’ve gone, too.
To be fair, a lot of this stuff is probably still in the Funny Little Bungalow. The pre-evacuation clear out that I was going to have never really happened. Everything is tucked (or shoe-horned) into what used to be our sitting room. I had a system in there – until Little Seymours Numbers One and Two found access to it. A mere two minutes in there each and any tentative mind map I might have had of stuff’s whereabouts is now totally defunct.
They’ve trashed it.
Meanwhile, I seem to find it all too easy to un-lose things. By which I mean that I am still acquiring stuff. In the weeks since we have evacuated the Funny Little Bungalow, I have adopted an old piano, taken ownership of a life-sized portrait of Marilyn Monroe, and snapped up a dolls’ house. Only this evening, I have spied a few paintings being given away by a local artist. And guess what? I want them, too.
I sometimes wonder if I have some sort of mania. Not klepto – I like free stuff – but try to avoid the illegal kind. I just can’t help collecting things.
I am telling myself it is all in the interests of the Future Interior Design Project. There will come a time when the New Funny Little Bungalow needs “dressing”. But Big Seymour might argue that now is not the time to put a piano in the entrance hall, given that the entrance hall is still, essentially, Baghdad. And as for Marilyn? She may well find herself doing a Jayne Mansfield and being decapitated if a roof tile falls on her head before she can be hung.
Hopefully this is all part of my Master Plan, the details of which will all become clear to me one day. Marilyn will grace a wall. The Four Little Seymours will tinker on the piano, and all my clutter will have a place.
And if it doesn’t? I will hire a skip.
Yes I will. You just watch me.
It’s only stuff. And in light of the dreadful events at the Grenfell Tower last week, I’m even more determined to see “things” for what they really are: convenient yet inconvenient, enjoyable whilst infuriating, disposable and replaceable. Unlike life, which is ultimately all that matters.
#godblessgrenfell
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