SANCTUM; FRIDAY 13TH AND SATURDAY 14TH

It's a different world today than it was on Friday.  Things have shifted.  We are viewing life through altered lenses, and figuring out how to move ahead.  Something happened yesterday that brought this home to me.  Friends of ours took us to see a performance piece in Bristol by Chicago installation artist Theaster Gates. 

The piece was performed in the Temple Church, or rather the husk of the Temple Church, since it was bombed in WWII during the Bristol blitz.  Theaster Gates constructed a performance space called Sanctum in the beautiful wreckage of the church.  

In that space, from October 29th until November 21st, performances take place every hour, twenty-four hours a day, for twenty-four days.  The programme is unlisted so you go with no clue what you're going to see.  You get what you get. 

When we arrived a concert was underway.  A group of young musicians performed experimental pieces.  
There was an organizer/drummer, and a bassist.  The rest of the musicians were disabled with varying degrees of disability.  The singer had Down's syndrome, and a percussionist and keyboard player were confined to wheelchairs, with obvious physical and mental disabilities.  The music was cacophonous and wonderful, the sounds cleverly linked together by the bassist.  The musicians were having a great time, and so was the audience.  People smiled, moved by the sheer joy of the young performers.  There was a feeling of relief in the air.

The second performer took the stage.  She was a pretty dark haired young woman with a flowing dress and a headscarf.  She announced that her performance would be a chant, in Arabic, of a prayer... a prayer to the 'Oneness'.  It felt like the room was holding its breath.

She was visibly nervous.  The chant would be a repetition of the same sequence of sentences for an hour.  She pointed to a blackboard nearby on which she had written the meaning of the chant's words.  She explained that she normally doesn't explain, but in the light of Friday's events in Paris she felt she should.  She fiddled with her white headscarf.  She told us that she was born and raised in Reading and that her father was Iranian, as was she, but then she added that she'd gone to Catholic school.  It felt like she was apologizing for who she was, and trying to distance herself from it.  

She had performed this chant every day of the installation, but one hour later each day, facing east while she sang.  She nervously adjusted her headscarf, and said that we could join in if we wanted, that we didn't have to look east, that we could look wherever we wanted.  At this point a man got up, his face hard, he looked angry.  He crossed the little aisle to his wife, just in front of us, and bent down, and said to her, loud enough that we could hear, "I'll see you outside," and he left the venue abruptly before the singer sang a note.  

The young woman took her position, and faced east, and began her chant.  You sensed complicated, disturbed thoughts flying around the room... you couldn't help it.  You had those thoughts yourself.

I felt badly for her.  For the previous weeks she had performed this same chant.  But I would bet her performance this Saturday was received very differently from the one she had performed Friday afternoon.  You could practically feel everyone silently, earnestly, paying too much attention, trying to prove that they could be normal, even though images of the news coverage of the Paris attacks were branded in our brains.  The fact that the piece was being performed in a bombed out Christian church only added heft to unspoken thoughts.  I would like to think that we were the same as we were the day before the attacks, but it felt obvious she was in front of a room full of people trying to come to terms with what had happened in Paris the day before. 

Yet there we all were, a group of people gathered together to watch a performance in a public space, in a large ethnically diverse city.  There were no armed guards.  Nobody seemed to be frightened or nervous, except for the girl.  So, as different as things may be, we were still essentially the same; trying hard to live normal lives, trying to accept people as individuals, and trying not to let a lunatic fringe dictate how we are.

          

    

OF MICE AND GODDESSES

On a recent Sunday I went with a neighbour to a goddess festival.  Anyone who knows me knows I am not the goddess type.  A few of my friends are self-proclaimed goddesses, all the more power to them.  I even knew a divine healer once who became a divine healer because she was sleeping with another divine healer.  I didn't know divine healing could be passed from one practitioner to another like an STD, but my friend assured me it could.

Goddess on the Move

These goddesses gathered in Glastonbury dressed in full goddess regalia.  They paraded to the top of the Tor hauling an effigy of an ancient female deity.  There was much chanting and raising of arms to the sky in praise of The Goddess, with dresses and tresses tossed about by the wind.  I do not fit in with this crowd. 

All Hail the Goddess
and The Nuclear Plant

I am no fan of the diaphanous flowing gown, and floral crowns have never been my millinery of choice.  I've been told I have swimmer's shoulders.  When I wear flowing garb, I look like a drag queen, but the kind goddesses were not strict with the dress code.  And, no matter how wacky and woo-woo this all sounds, it's hard to find offence with a celebration of feminine strength.

 

The Tor is a unique place.  Look out at the vast vista and on one side you see the site of mythical Avalon where Excalibur was forged and where Arthur and Guinevere are said to be buried at Glastonbury Abbey.  In contrast, off in the distance on the other side of the Tor you can see the two lumbering reactors of the Hinkley Point nuclear plant.  Past versus present.  Myth versus science.

Welcome

Shortly after the brilliant optimistic celebration that is the goddess walk, Husband and I found ourselves at Banksy's Dismaland, a bleak commentary on contemporary society.  

RIP Cinderella

No matter how depressing, and yet at the same time amazing, Dismaland forces you to think about things like drowning migrants, economic inequity, pestering paparazzi and the absurdity of grinning dancing mice.  It spoke to my heart since I am no fan of Disneyland. The extreme visual statements in Banksy's theme park make us uncomfortable in our complacency.

Miserable Mouse Host

If Only He Were This
Easy To Be Rid Of

Dismaland Imbeciles

The disassembled Dismaland is being taken to Calais to build shelter for refugees.  So the exhibition didn't just highlight a bad situation, it's doing something to alleviate it.

Everybody talks about following a middle-path in life, keeping things on an even keel.  I try to do this, I really do, but I am consistent in my failure.  Extremes are a slap in my sleep-walking face. 

The Great Outdoors

Our current life is an exercise in extremes.  Husband and I craved an escape from the noise of downtown L.A. so we ended up in a village in Somerset with no store and more sheep than people.  We were tired of driving everywhere, so we gave up car-ownership and we walk, sometimes five miles to pick up milk. 

The Great Outdoors

We lived in a cement landscape and now we are surrounded by fields and farms, badgers and rabbits, and of course, peafowl.  

Years ago I had an extreme case of extremes.  I was hired to look after a billionaire's home-based art collection; basically just fending off requests for viewings by famous people and art scholars.  It was an amazing collection, housed in his amazing Beverly Hills mansion.  The first time I drove up to the place a voice squawked out of massive shrubbery protecting it from plebeians.  It asked me to declare my business.  I cheeped out my answer.  Gates opened, and I drove up a huge winding drive in my humble little Mazda.  The place is magnificent. The collection is stunning.  I was often the only one there, except for the house staff.

 

At the same time Husband and I were volunteering at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.  We tutored homeless children, one family in particular, four kids and a thirty-two year old mom.  The single moms tried to work if they had jobs, and keep their kids safe from the dangers of the street.  It was a sad and brutal existence.  Once a week I journeyed from one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in L.A. to skid row and the mission and people who had no home at all.  The juxtaposition of the empty mansion, (Mr. Gazillionaire spent most of his time elsewhere), and the crammed shelter was disturbing.  Neither seemed real; each one pointed out the incongruity of the other.

Recently Husband and I were in London and we went to Hampton Court, the former home of Henry the wife-killing VIII.  It's the epitome of opulence, with ornate gardens and a Chocolate Room designated for the sole purpose of preparing that confectionary.  Two days later we were back in our little village, which has fewer houses than the palace has chimneys, and we attended the local festival.  

Two Quid On #3 To Win

There were ferret races.  I placed a bet on the winning weasel.  Gourds were judged, beer was swilled.  There was no Chocolate Kitchen but there were plenty of fine jams and chutneys for sale from Rita who runs our excellent local farm shop.

 

This week I met a dear friend in London.  We were walking down Oxford Street around rush hour, which means you can lift your feet from the pavement and be carried along by the swell of pedestrians.  We passed the Oxford Circus tube stop.  The steps leading to the underground were crammed with people, none of them moving, standing like Terra Cotta Warriors. 

We Want To Go
Home

The tube stop was closed temporarily because of overcrowding on the platform, and it would open again once the crowding had subsided.  Meanwhile, everyone waited on the steps, staring at their phones, or at nothing at all.  They reminded me of the sheep I sometimes see out my window; an entire flock standing stock still, all staring at the same nothing.

We Want To Go Home

      

These contrasts make me sit up and pay attention.  They remind me that peculiarities and disparities and wonder and horror are all a part of life.  They wake me from my sometimes sleep-walking state, and I appreciate them for that reason.  

BIG NEWS IN LITTLE DUNDON

When we lived in Los Angeles our big burly tattooed neighbour was a rapper who didn't rap.  No one was exactly sure what he did, but he had visitors who visited for extremely short periods of time, all the time, and when he opened his door to greet them, a thick fog of pot wilted the plants in the hallway garden we'd cultivated.  Billows of smoke combined with the window-rattling bass notes of his boom box eventually got him evicted.  His tiny little mother came to move him out.  We never really knew him but he provided lots of material for interesting speculation by Husband and I and others in the building.  

Our Happy Plants

In our little English village we're the oddballs whose every action raises eyebrows and makes tongues wag.  Around here our accents, along with the outrageous things we do, like walking to town, living car-free, not putting our garbage and recycling out the night before collection, then having the audacity to sometimes leave those bins out for four or five hours after pick-up, make us targets for gossip.  Sometimes this can be sweet and charming, sometimes it can verge on crazy. 

Lovely Cider

Last week we decided to something absolutely insane and go for a picnic on our lunch break.  Our Amsterdam Friend was here.  It was a glorious sunny day.  At noon we headed over to Somerton for some fish and chips.
  

Survivors

We took a blanket, bought some cider and went to a hilltop that looked out over sloping fields of bright yellow rapeseed.  Behind us, across the street, was a row of houses.  In front of us, nothing but the vista of rolling countryside, forest-topped hills, and fields of sheep and lambs; the lucky few who dodged the Aga cooker over Easter.

Rapeseed

We were looking out at the beauty when a voice interrupted the discussion we were having about the metaphysics of speed (the mph kind, not the methamphetamine) and the virtues of vinegar versus mayonnaise.

"Excuse me," we three swiveled our heads towards the voice which belonged to an elderly woman in her eighties, wearing a dove grey skirt, white blouse and grey cardigan, "but would you like a cup of tea?"  On the ground near the woman was an ancient cat, one eye nearly fully shut.  We looked from the woman to the cat.  "That's Gerry," she nodded to the cat, "he's seventeen years old and he was hit by a car, and I never thought he'd make it but he did."

Gerry Reminded Me of
Our Crazy Cat Mouse 

We were startled.  It's charming as hell to be offered a cup of tea while you're sitting on a hillside having a picnic.  We graciously declined, sure she was just suggesting it as a conversation starter.  She surveyed our picnic, checked us out quite thoroughly, determined we weren't a gang of foreign bandits (Canadian/American and Dutch) and lingered to chat.  She was lonely.  "My husband," she said, "died several years ago and now I am all alone except for Gerry," she glanced again at the one-eyed cat, "and Bobby, that's my other cat, but he's at home."

We chatted about the weather, the rapeseed, the cats.  I offered Gerry some cod, but he declined.  The chatter wound down naturally, and the lady excused herself with a smile.  She headed across the street to her home.   Gerry walked behind her.  Shortly after her departure, a half dozen men and women, all walking dogs, strolled by our picnic, lingering to the point of lurking, surveying the spread on our blanket, eavesdropping on our conversation.  Clearly the word had spread through the village, did you see those people having a picnic!  Unbelievable!

A week later husband and I were walking along that same route.  The elderly lady was standing out front of her house with Gerry.  She greeted us like friends, even though I don't think she remembered us, but we were visitors.  We stood and chatted a while with her about the weather.  Gerry sat listening.  The elderly are often very lonely.  Just ask Cranky Pensioner and my Ohio Friend.  

Something outrageous happened about a month ago, something that veered talk away from weather, the usual conversational staple, and into dark and dangerous places.  It wreaked havoc in the village.  It created a buzz on the streets, or should I say street.  Tongues began to wag, and there has been no end to the discord it caused.  Not since the dog fouling incident on Church Lane a few months ago has there been such a travesty.  There was a car parked in the tiny church parking lot and no one knew who it belonged to!

No one could believe someone had the audacity to leave a vehicle parked up the hill, out of the way, at the very bottom of the churchyard parking lot, and simply abandon it.  It was an aberration.  Even though the car blocks no traffic, and is an eyesore out nobody's window.  It's... it's outrageous! 

The Talk of The Town

The car lies closest to Bitter Man's house, like there wasn't already enough misery in his life.  One day Husband was in the lane examining the brambles he needed to trim.  Bitter Man spotted him and scuttled out.

"Do you know whose car that is?" he asked, because the appearance of such a car was a weird event and we are the nearest weird people he knows.

"What car?" Husband replied.  With the onslaught of spring and the explosion of leaves on the trees, we hadn't even seen the vehicle.  Husband went up to look at the mysterious car. "No idea who owns it," he told Bitter Man.

"Well, it doesn't really bother me," Bitter Man lied.  "But I called the Church Warden, and he called the police, and then the police came and said the car's registered properly, and there's nothing they can do about it."

"Hmmm," Husband said.

"What if something happened to the driver?" Bitter Man lowered his voice, whispered mysteriously, "What if he came to no good end, or what if he topped himself?"

"Or what," I said to Husband when this news trickled back to me, "if he went for a walk over the hill, and down the fields and was taken out by a herd of killer cows?"

"I'm sure the police would have been notified in the case of a missing person,"  Husband said logically, "maybe it belongs to someone staying down the road." 

Anybody Here Own
That Car?

Several days later, another neighbour, whom we've barely seen enough to identify as a neighbour, came walking up the driveway.  Husband was in the garden.

"Hullo," says Previously Unseen Neighbour (PUN) who didn't bother to introduce himself.  Since we stick out like sore thumbs, everyone knows us, and assumes we know them.  

"Wondered if you'd noticed the car parked up the hill?" 

"Yes," says Husband, "I have."

"Know whose it is?" PUN asks.

"No," says Husband, "I haven't got a clue, but I know the police were called, and I know they've said there's nothing they can do about it."

"I know all that," PUN waved Husband's sentence away, "I just thought you might know something about it."  He looked at our house suspiciously, like maybe we were harboring the driver inside.

"Nope," said Husband. 

"It's a bloody nuisance," PUN said as he disappeared down our driveway.

"I don't think he believed me," Husband said later. 

Why, we were stymied, would PUN think the car abandon-er was part of our household.  Why, when we have no car and a driveway that can easily park a half-dozen vehicles, would we force our guest to park up the hill, unless it was just to irritate Bitter Man and PUN.  In our more perverse moments we think of buying a scooter and leaving it chained to the cemetery gate, just to watch the fall out.

A Little Fun

In our village little things are big news.  And while sometimes it might feel a little intrusive, and a little claustrophobic, in a world where there is so much really big bad news, talking about simple things like a parked car and a one-eyed cat can be a welcome relief.

            

CHICKEN LITTLE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE

I recently returned from Toronto having replaced Sister for a spell caring for our father, Crotchety Pensioner.  CP remains crankier than ever.  He can't help it.   He's never seen a silver lining in his life.  He will remain this way until he dies.  But I am placing bets he will never die.  At ninety-one he was out shoveling snow for five hours.  You couldn't stop him.  You'd have to tackle him to the ground, drag him into the house, and tie him to a chair in order to contain him.  It's tricky... how do you stop someone who is physically able from doing something they want to do, even if it's something that might hurt them.  It's a fine line, protecting someone versus holding them prisoner. 

One day I prevented him from going out to throw compost in the back yard to start off the gardening season.  Three feet of snow blanketed the ground and the temperature was minus 40 with the wind chill factor.  He's like the Energizer Bunny. 

Mr. Leszczynski

View From The Gulag  

If you picked him up his legs would keep moving.  CP had a very tough winter. When he's trapped inside everyday seems endless, and CP gets crankier and more negative.  Sister and I are wary of his dour disposition,  admire his tenacity, and hope it's those latter genes that will help us in the long run.

Next Year it's Aruba

Sister had a lovely break in L.A.  But it was a short lived foray into warmth.  Winter refused to leave Toronto.  The day of Sister's return a blizzard hit with snowflakes the size of chipmunks.  Cars skidded on city streets like bumper cars at the CNE's Kiddie Midway(that's the Canadian National Exhibition for you non-Torontonians).  I was petrified navigating Lakeshore Blvd. in white-out conditions with drivers trailing me by inches.

Red Alert!  Red Alert!

I managed to crawl back to CP's house by late afternoon, driving twenty miles an hour for the entire thirteen mile journey from Queen and Ossington.  Not only had the blizzard stopped the city in its tracks, but our rental car had no snow tires.  Fortunately the snow didn't last long, it morphed into freezing rain.  Sister's plane was due in at eight pm that night.

By the time I got home, the house was in black-out.  The entire neighbourhood was in blackout.  Actually, a good chunk of the city was in black out.  CP was unaware.  He is nearly blind and navigating in the darkness is a natural occurrence.  Besides, he is used to black outs, relishes them in fact, they might lead to catastrophe.  I lit candles. 

Exploding Transformers

In the kitchen I am distracted by a series of alarming flashes outside the window, otherworldly against a sickly greenish dusk sky. Only later did I learn the fireworks were exploding electrical transformers.  In the meantime I wonder how this black-out will affect the airport, just a couple of miles away.  Is Sister going to be diverted to Cuba or Florida.  She should be so lucky.

In order to determine Sister's estimated time or date of arrival, I dialed the ancient Rotary phone CP uses, and called Brother-In-Law; a man in California possessing both power and the internet.  Brother-In-Law could monitor Sister's progress from afar and call me on my cell if she'd been diverted.  Miraculously, Sister's flight was on time.

 

It's The End Of The World

CP loves disaster.  Long winter days trapped indoors turns that love into obsession.  With not much else to do he is glued to the news.  During the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis he was practically giddy.  "It's WW III!  It's WW III!  It's the end of the world!" he reported, "I won't be missing much when I'm gone," he laughs.

Later as I head out the airport to pick up Sister, he tells me, "You couldn't find worse weather to fly in.  You wouldn't catch me in an airplane today... they're just machines.  They fail.  They drop from the sky."  CP built planes for a living before he retired to spread his message of joy throughout the world.  

  

Giving myself forty-five minutes to travel the eight minutes it normally takes to get to the airport, I set out.  Ten minutes to de-ice the car - done!  Icy slush covers the roads.  Icy sleet falls from the sky.  No traffic lights.  Car rears careen right and left and right again, like big metal Kardashian butts, while taking corner's at a snail's pace.  Vehicles lie abandoned in ditches waiting for tow trucks that won't arrive.  

As I crest the bridge over Highway 27 I see huge lights in the distance, massive lights.  Pitch black all the way to the airport, then these brilliant lights shining in the murky atmosphere.  The airport is on a generator.  Inside the place is jammed; packed with people whose flights never left, people waiting for friends and family delayed by hours or even days.

         

Sister finally lands, one of the 'lucky' few to arrive in Toronto that night.  The terminal lights flicker on and off with the power fluctuations, like some outpost airport in Kathmandu.  Sister comes down the ramp with her luggage.  A calm, robotic, end-of-the-world voice reminds us over the PA system that much of the city is without power.  "Welcome back!"  I hug her. 

   

We arrive home.  CP is seated in the living room in the dark, (candles extinguished for safety's sake.)  He's all bundled up, staring out the window, into more dark, aware of the storm, certain his daughters are dead.  He seems more surprised than anything when we pull up.  Once the shock of our survival wears off, he heads upstairs to turn on the news and check in on what fresh mess has hit the world.  We remind him there's no power and he'll have to wait for the next disaster.

Sister and I sit on the bed wearing pajamas and sweaters, down vests and socks, under mounds of comforters, clutching glasses of Merlot.  Outside ice pellets ping against the window.  CP has retired, happy that his 'girls' are home.  Sister and I sit in the dark, with no heat and no power, pondering this peculiar fate of ours.

In the middle of the night the power is restored, but the weather remains foul.  The next night I head back to the airport to return to the UK. "Let's hope you get home alive," is CP's farewell. 

The Joy of De-Icing

As the plane is de-iced on the runway I replay CP's encouraging words about air travel and airplanes.  With power restored he will watch the CBC and wait for news of my aircraft falling from the sky.

I return to England to find that spring has sprung.  Walking the streets of London I am acutely aware that I have freedom again... that my life is my own.  The luxury of spending time with Dear Friend brings me joy.  When you care for someone elderly your life is not your own.  While CP may feel a prisoner of the elements, Carer feels a prisoner of CP. 

Spring Sprung

It's miraculous the change in outlook that fine weather can bring.  CP has long been invited to live in Southern California where he would have warmth and a year round garden to tend, but he refuses change.  Yet another case where you wish you could do something against his will that might be good for him; an abduction perhaps.  Back at the Pink Cottage the sun shines and the flowers are shooting out of the ground.  Still, there is drama.  I return home to care for three other irascible, willful creatures of nature, Penny and the Pea-Chicks, and encounter another unusual family dynamic... but I will save that for next time, and for now just enjoy the daffodils.    

A MESSAGE FROM THE GULAG

Husband is content at the Pink Cottage feeding the muster (yes this is a correct term for a collection of peafowl) of birds, revising his novel, breathing in the fragrant spring air and watching the daffodils nudge their way towards sunlight.   

Contented Husband 

Wife, that would be me, isn’t quite so ecstatic.  I am relocated temporarily from Somerset to Toronto; fulfilling my tour of duty tending to the most Crotchety Pensioner (forthwith referred to as CP) in the GTA (that’s Greater Toronto Area.)

Recently the Economist named Toronto the World’s best city to live in.   Perhaps from April to October, but from where I freeze I beg to differ.  I contemplate heading out in temperatures hovering around -25, or with the wind chill factor, -40.  The Friday before I left the UK the sun shone down on Somerset, the robins, blue tits, and chaffinches sang joyously, and even the jackdaws greeted us en-mass out the back of the house, clamoring for breakfast.  The hillsides were so green they looked photo-shopped.  The day I flew out the verdant countryside was lousy with leaping lambs.

Then....

....And Now

 Three hours of shoveling snow can shrivel the bloom off the rose that is Toronto.  The neighbour next door flaunts his fancy snow blowing machine, the newly blown powder drifting down onto the driveway I’ve just finished clearing in order to make my escape.  CP doesn’t believe in newfangled machinery.

A Nice but Frigid Stroll  By My Alma Mater

Out on the street the beauty of pristine white snow is fouled by splotches of dog urine, then stippled with motor oil and sprinkled with salt.  As reluctant as I am to venture out into this subarctic hell, getting out of the house is a necessary ordeal.  It takes fifteen minutes to layer on enough clothing to protect against the elements.  Then bundled up like a Siberian Cosmonaut ready for a space walk, I realize I’ve forgotten something.  I pull off salt chewed boots and tip-toe back into the house to retrieve a bag of garbage that I will ferry out into the world and deposit in one of the many public garbage cans that Sister and I have identified throughout the GTA. 

No Words Needed

Refuse must be removed from the house covertly, before CP gets hold of it.  It seems as time slips through his hands, he refuses to let anything go.  One characteristic many elderly folk acquire is the inability to throw anything out.  When the pensioner is also a World War Two survivor, you can ratchet that trait up a gazillion fold.  Nothing should be tossed out, ever… because you never know when you might need it; no can, plastic container, nor their lids, no piece of foil or defunct car battery.  My father has lived in this house since I was ten…. he started collecting things on the day we moved in.  If it weren’t for diligent culling by my mother…  well, I wouldn’t be able to find the back door.  When our mother passed away, or escaped, as some have said, her daughters took over.

In his dotage CP has become McGyver. “Don’t throw that out!” he shouts when he catches us removing blown light bulbs, TVs old enough not to work but not so old as to be vintage, ancient tinned goods, prescriptions that expired a decade ago, emptied paper towel rolls, shoes that fit no one which begs the question where did they come from, used cat litter and a fake Christmas tree from which most of the fake boughs have mysteriously disappeared,  “I can use it!” 

Vintage Fruit Cocktail

He once fashioned a winter hat from a section of our mother’s discarded leather coat.  It was red with a black fur lining and trim.  The hat was pointed.  CP looked like an insane elf when he wore it.  Now he wears multiple hats underneath it.  “Have to layer for the cold,” he says.  Yes, I agree, but he wears so many layers it's like he's mummified.  Perhaps he is pre-mummifying himself for us.

CP has shrunk with age, as one does, as I will and you will.  He’s also partially blind and partially deaf, and moving pretty slowly.  This makes it easy for us to race past him unnoticed on garbage days with empty boxes, cans of solidified paint and six foot long rolls of decomposing carpet.  Had he noticed us he would have claimed there was some use for every one of these items.  In years gone by everything removed, upon our mother’s request, was scrutinized.  Sometimes CP dragged things up from the bottom of the driveway, and then relocated them in the basement, or the family room or the garage, and there they remained, unused and gathering dust. 

 

Before we started our removal program, under our mother’s direction, the family room and the garage were unusable.  To this day the garage is the repository for an un-drivable car, an un-floatable boat, fishing poles, nets without bottoms, tents and other remnants of a former sporty life.

Stuff

Sister and I filled a dumpster with unusable detritus several years ago.  We personally hauled 1.7 tons of formerly used lumber.  It was during a heat-wave.  She and I were out in the driveway wielding a chainsaw.  The city had ordered CP to remove this build-up from his property under threat of fine.  Even so he tried to squirrel away bits and pieces of rubbish for future use.  The garden is now usable, at least when it’s not buried in three feet of snow.  

Thanks to our endeavours the family room is now perfectly habitable, but not in time for our mother to enjoy.  The two family cats have taken it over as a refuge; a necessity since CP’s diminished sight means he routinely sits on one or the other of them as they nap in the living room.  

Don't Tell Him Where I Am

 

There’s still no room in the garage for the rental cars Sister and I have when we’re here.  CP was hoping we could use his un-drivable car with its manual choke, different sized wheels on front and back, and engine the size of a skidoo’s.

In The Driver's Seat

 Come Rain or Snow or Sleet...

Disposal of things broken and useless is a Sisyphean task, and we are mindful of not removing items which have real emotional meaning to CP, but we’re pretty sure he won’t miss the box of ancient rubber bands which decomposed upon touch or the carpet sweeper that fell apart when CP picked it up or the copies of the Etobicoke Guardian dating from nineteen-eighty-three.  I haul these things across snow banks the size of Somerset sheep making my way to random dumpsters in windswept parking lots.  This is my battle.  At home, CP has his own battle; a daily one, to hang on to his memories and his mind, and wonder where the hell that box of elastic bands disappeared to.   

Meanwhile.... Back in Somerset