To Princes Risborough, 172 Jasmine Crescent, to help Rob clear out Henry's flat. And taking a day off work to do so, because I need my weekend. Leave just after 9, traffic a bit rubbish, long queue for level crossing at Foxton (argh) and slow in the rain around Stevenage (argh) but then it gets better. Stop in Berkhamsted for a coffee in the high street and to look around for old times sake, even wander into the library. Which is the same hideous 70's stuff from the outside, but rearranged inside. And then, via Wendover, to PR.
Rob isn't there - he won't be till past 1 - so set to work in the spare room, which Henry used as an office. Sit on the bed and slowly work through the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet (Sunday-last was the first visit, and I did the top two drawers), throwing almost everything away: mostly papers from the Jasmine residents association, and its bitter internecine conflicts which I can't bring myself to care about very much. I do the world a favour by throwing it all away. Only tiny interest is hint of trouble with the estate manager person, which might account for Henry's sudden change of opinion of Ross. Or maybe not, and who cares now. Then do the papers that have fallen off the back of the table, and discover a letter that should have been sent to me about Henry's will, etc. Then start on the junk under the bed, and on top of the filing cabinet, and bin huge piles of stuff that Henry should have thrown out years ago: christmas cards, used envelopes, all kinds of tat. Bloody hell I hope no-one has to do this for me when I peg it. Not that Henry has pegged it yet: he is relaxing in a nursing home in Milton-under-Wychwood.
Rob phones and says he won't be along till half two, so I go out for some food for lunch. Wander down the high street, also looking for a post box to return-to-sender some of the junk mail (find one later). Go to "the field mouse" cafe, which is a bit twee but the cheese sandwich and coffee are fine. Still reading "the count of Monte Christo" on kindle. Finish, wander past street market but buy nowt. PR looks like an OK small market town to live in.
Back, keep going, Rob arrives. He does the living room. By late afternoon the spare room is "clean" - not in the sense of being clean, because it isn't. Fortunately there is no point in hoovering because Rob is insistent that the carpets are going to have to go (well the living room one certainly will have to, because it has poo traces on it, dried out now of course). But it is clean in the sense that I have gone through everything, thrown out the junk, boxed up a few things I want or we want to keep, and the papers worth keeping are in the top drawer of the filing cabinet which is otherwise empty. Lots of misc stuff in there: some of Henry's stories, a towen few sugar factory reports, Jack Miller-Hall's passports, etc etc.
We decide to keep going, rather than break for dinner. Rob has brought a bit of bread and cheese we share, and I find a can of 7-up zero. I'm not going to be able to come back soon, what with the bumps coming up. Start, well continue, on the living room. We've been throwing stuff on the main table so bin some of that. Bin lots of photos (Henry had an amazing ability to visit interesting places, like New Zealand, and take photos of car parks and floral arrangements in his hotels). Keep old ones, including some I'll bring back for mother to try to identify. Finally push into the cupboards, box up the pointless nick-nacks for charity shops in the hope that some other poor fool will want them. Dusting. Box up some books for charity shops.
Take 5 bags of rubbish out to the car - it can go in our home rubbish over the weeks to come. Take out a few boxes of stuff to keep - envelopes, sewing basket, a camera for E, some spanish dictionaries for D. Not much really.
What next? I won't be back for a while, Rob can maybe clear out more of the junk, shouldn't be too hard now its boxed up. Need to take misc stuff to charity shops, maybe get someone to take the fridges away, and some of the furniture too. Then get an estate agent to look round - the big question is, can we sell it un-made-up or does it all have to be painted?
And so, home. Only takes 1.5 hours, now I've worked out the One True Route (back to Wendover/Berko, to M25, off at J21A, Hatfield, Stevenage, home).
Musings: inevitably, this brings various thoughts to mind. Principally, "what's it all for then, guv?". You go through your life acquiring stuff, and then in the end it all turns out to be tat that your two nephews find utterly without merit (not totally true of course: I took an owl or two off him). There was crockery there in a display cabinet that probably hadn't been used in 20 years. One motto could be:
* "don't live alone".
Henry was "unlucky" in that Micky (Mildred didn't like to be called Mildred, for some odd reason) died of cancer when he was 60-ish (arguably she was even less lucky). But then, inexplicably, Henry chose to move out to PR (note: as far as I know, he had no real friends in PR; certainly none left by now. He was always fairly insular, I think). Why? He had no history at all there and knew no-one. All his family (us, Berko, and the Proctors, Leighton Buzzard) lived more than half an hour away (and that is my driving on recent roads: more like an hour for him). Berko has just as good rail links to London (well better) if that is what he wanted. I can only assume he deliberately stayed away, which hints at something. If so, I don't think it turned out well. In retrospect, what he really should have done, once the political situation settled and the violence died down, was to have moved back to Jamaica, something he clearly desperately wanted to do... but not quite enough to actually do it, in time. And now he is home bound. Mother learnt this lesson, from Henry or others or from her own astuteness, when she moved from the big but fairly isolated house in Cheddington to Milton-under-Wychwood where Rob and Nina are about 5 years back. So motto number two is:
* "don't wait too long to jump".
You need to sort out your retirement situation well before you are too decrepit to act. Motto 3, I think would be:
* "throw out your own trash"
and don't leave it to others. Or at least label it, so people know if they care. And write your life story down, if you've ever done anything interesting. Henry *had* done interesting stuff, as it turns out - loads of trips out to sugar-mills in Brazil, the Philippines, Africa. Unfortunately he never talked about those, but only about his comparatively boring journeys down the Amazon. Or am I unfair? Quite likely I never listened properly. But if I was going to listen to anyone it would have been Joan, but Joan rarely talked about herself.
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