Possessions

I'm surrounded by them.

Even friends who aspire to be labelled "minimalist" don't escape them.

What are they for?

In the kitchen, hanging on a hook is a mug that leaks. The leaking is a recent phenomenon. As the glaze has finally cracked coffee will gradually seep through in crazy-paving lines and bead on the china until enough gathers to drip.

As mugs go it's rather ordinary. Standard size, white with thin red horizontal lines. Nothing special at all. So why is it still on the cup-hook in the kitchen; why am I so reluctant to retire this essentially useless object to a cupboard and why won't I even contemplate throwing it away?

It's not a mug but a memory. A souvenir of the real rather than the kitsch kind.

Because it isn't mine, or wasn't. It was Dave's mug and in the course of a dozen years I've always thought of it as Dave's mug. It's hung at the end of the row in three houses. It's been my first choice for a small cuppa all that time and it's still Dave's mug.

After all that you'll probably not be astonished to learn that Dave was a special friend. I haven't spoken to him in a decade and I have no idea where he might be today. But I have his mug. Somewhere there's a photograph or two, but the image doesn't have the same meaning. But an object, a possession, a trivial part of the effluvia if his life inexplicably has significance.

Having been struck by this association that would be quite invisible to others I find myself looking around the house and being reminded afresh of things. And being astonished that there are should be so many.

A ragged and stained jumper loaned one bitter February night by Patrick in preparation for a walk up the Great North Road during which we both wept is special in a way that one he deliberately gifted me is not. The glass fronted bookcase that was Barry's but which always reminds me of Peter. The kitchen table that was Howard's. The wine rack left behind by Bernhard. A long empty KOCMOC cigarette packet brought back from Russia by Norman. My desk which I bought with my Grandfather's legacy at a time when I should perhaps have been more sensible to spend the money on food and bills. My dining table which was Mother's birthday gift to me on my thirtieth. An empty bottle of Armagnac brought by James. The cut glass decanter inherited from Edna, the family's oldest friend and another that was my leaving present from the hotel where I worked as a teenager. Claire's Casa Pupa plates, Ian's pool cue. It could seem as if I were entirely furnished with other people's cast-offs.

Sometimes the object and it's associated memories are no surprise. Others are almost inexplicable and certainly would make no sense to a stranger.

Looking around at the possessions inevitably I am given to think of the people of whom no physical trace remains to me. I wonder if memory is reinforced by these things or if the possession of them as an external stimulus allows the purely internal remembrance to fade.

Vivid still are my cousin David, Stuart, Raymon, Marc and Franc, Isobelle, Yves, Pierre, Marie, Guy, Christophe, Digby. Many others too.

Walking in the park with David naming the trees and his surprise that one should be able to identify them so. Watching Stuart trying, despite all advice, to buy a newspaper with an old twenty Franc piece found on the pavement. Playing table-tennis with Raymon, the flicker of anger across his features as I managed to smash a ball past his guard. Marc and Franc in their underwear - and me equally undressed - watching the water planes trying to douse a forest fire. Discovering with Isobelle just how uncomfortable a haystack really is. Wiring a light for his mother with Yves. Dining with Pierre and his grandparents watching the sun set across the mountains. Marie's rare laugh as I made some pratfall. Riding pillion behind Guy in a thunderous downpour, holding him too tight as he negotiated narrow mountain roads. The look on Christophe's face the first time he walked into a gaysoc meeting. And Digby's delight because I gave him a new photograph album.

People and things and memory. How unutterably strange.

Matthew

-- 
But screw your courage to the sticking-place
And we'll not fail
- Macbeth, act 1, sc. 7.


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