The man in a van from
WERM arrived bright and early this morning to empty my hall of the thirty or so electronic items that have been cluttering up my house for (in some cases) over a decade. WERM were recommended to me on Twitter and got in touch with me promptly to arrange a pick up and I was very happy to be spared the trip to the dump and to know that they would be doing their best to give new life to stuff that was doing nothing but gathering dust.
Although there was a parking space right outside of my house it was marginally too small for the truck the man had arrived in, but rather than blocking up the street, the guy parked fifty or so yards away, which was going to make his job a lot more difficult, but which showed a consideration to others which I respected. I guess we only notice the inconsiderate pricks who don't give a fuck, which helps us create an unfair stereotype of the men in the ven (plural of vans obviously).
It took him a few trips to get the various printers and bags of wires and ephemera up to his van and we saved up the biggest items for the end, as it would not have been practical to take them up the road. The bulkiest was my old 1998 Sony TV. It's only about 13 years old and was cutting edge when I got it, yet it looks like a relic from another century (which of course it is). It's been on various journeys up and down the stairs in the eight and a half years I have lived here,
causing the removal men trouble on the day I moved in, then as it got replaced by a newer model finding a home in my bedroom for a while, before being taken down to the basement by me and Collings. Now, for the last time, I had to help carry it up a narrow staircase, finding it difficult to hold on to, worrying it would slip or fall on to me. The TV must be annoyed to have never claimed a victim yet in all its moves, so it would be fitting if it took me out this one last time. And even more fitting that I should be killed by a 1990s telly, as that was the last time I was on. And now it would be on me.
But we got it out on to the pavement uninjured, along with the chunky 1990s laser printer that had been one of the prize possessions of Fist of Fun Ltd and had printed up all our scripts for that series. I was chucking out the past and moving into the future. It felt good to be rid of all this stuff and the house already seems tidier. The little tower of defunct printers that has been in the middle of my office for months has now gone. It was beautiful modern art, but it makes moving around in the attic both easier and less precarious.
I hope the guys at WERM can make some good money off of this stuff - it's ridiculous the way we hang on to stuff, just because it's "ours", even if we don't even ever use it. I don't think a more Aboriginal approach to possessions would do us any harm. And yet it's difficult to give up on stuff, as my hoarding shows. Those videos and CDs are going to stay in boxes because of some notion that they are "mine". Though I don't think any charity shop would be able to cope with this volume of stuff and it seems wrong to throw them away and I can't be bothered to sell them off. But one step at a time to a world with no possessions. Imagine that. Imagining no possessions is as good as giving them up. As John Lennon showed.
I managed to do a bit of research into the Golliwog for my Richard Herring's Objective on the subject. There's some astonishing stuff on this sinister and offensive item, but mostly it's just incredible how much attitudes have changed in the last fifty years. Although she didn't create the Golliwog, Enid Blyton wrote about them quite a lot, including a book that I think I might have had as a child called "The Three Golliwogs". To give you a flavour, here's a small section (which seems like a parody, but I have found it quoted in various places - do let me know if it's a hoax), which reads like something from Monty Python in the way it combines childish place names with what would now be considered the worst possible racist language. Is this from a more innocent time? Or does it show that those people who talk about our standards continually slipping are talking out of their arseholes:
"Once the three bold golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn't quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woggie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song -- which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys."
Oh what jolly fun! Weren't the 50s an idyllic time? Harmless, harmless fun. As if something like that could have any effect on young minds.
