Just over three weeks ago my father-in-law died. I’m not going to write here about the how,
why and when but suffice to say his death was not unexpected when it happened
but would have been only a few weeks before. I’m also not going to write about my grief or
about my feelings; not because I don’t have any but because I’m acutely aware
that his children and grandchildren have experienced a greater loss than have
I. Again, I will simply say that I am
sad and I have a few regrets but mainly positive memories of a man who had been
part of my life for 15 years.
What I going to write about is the process of clearing out
Tony’s home. I am thankful to say that
his daughter (my sister-in-law) has largely dealt with the administrative side
of things so we have been most shielded from that frustration (that is not to
criticise the authorities, it’s very easy to do that when unaware of the
massive workloads they experience). I am
talking about the actual, physical and practical emptying of a man’s home (and
to an extent removing traces of his life in that home). It’s been hard work and it isn’t done yet.
The home in question was a two-room bungalow probably built
by the local authority in the 1950s. I
put this date on it with my limited knowledge due to the coal bunker in the
shed and the open fire in one room (and evidence that there was once an open
fire in the other). The floor was tiled
(more of that later). It had a nicely
sized front garden that took two sides of the house and a small back garden
which was just about enough to dry washing in.
The bathroom had not been updated for some time and the toilet was the
old high cistern/pull chain variety and I was surprised that was still there. It also had a built-on shed with the afore
mentioned coal bunker. This could have been a lovely little home.
I write the following not to denigrate someone I was hugely fond of and
not to belittle him as a man or person but to present an honest picture of a
situation; much of what follows is based on the first hand testimony of his children and
former wife.
In his younger days Tony had considered himself to be a
practical man and was very pleased when asked by others to lend his practical skills
to a situation. However… Tony did occasionally
cut corners, sometimes never fulfilled assignments to completion and as he become
older and frailer he often did not have the strength or will power to get
started. His home was, unfortunately, a
bit of a mess. He also was not fond of
asking for help or having others interfere which contributed to the
situation. He had been the kind of bloke
who accumulates items, sometimes in very bad condition, would repair (to a
degree) those items and sell them on.
His daughter mentioned a tale of a collective of Dyson vacuum cleaners
that he intended to work on but that is another story for a different media. Tony had accumulated a lot of stuff,
especially tools which we are in the process of sorting to see what can be
salvaged and what is for the tip (by “the tip” I refer to the municipal recycling
centre or dump).
My first job a few days ago was to sort through records and
DVDs for anything we could sell. I do
not wish to sound like I am moaning here but Tony was not well covered for his
death and when he died the cost of his funeral was largely born by his daughters. It has been agreed that anything that has no
sentimental value we will attempt to sell with monies raised going towards the
funeral bill. So, records first! I am quite a fan of vinyl and I read Record
Collector and though not an expert I do think I have the skills to identify
what has some commerciality and what is essentially without financial value. One of his Grandsons had already made claim to
the Johnny Cash albums and the (signed) Slim Whitman box set but the rest came
to me to sort and I truly enjoyed going through them with a mixture of
fascination and bemusement. Of around 60
albums and a handful of singles there are four or five that may be worth a few
pounds to the right collector in the right place, possibly around £50 in total
if eBay is to be believed. However, the
right collector is very unlikely to appear at a car-boot sale and that value is
assumed from eBay listings for the same items and none of these had bids against
them. The rest of the albums we are
keeping hold of as there is no point in even trying to sell. I like to have vinyl in the house just to look
at, there are around 25 country and western albums for t’mrs and who knows, one
evening in times to come I may have an urge to listen to an Open University
English Literature album from 1970, Hawaiian music or Swiss yodelling.
DVDs are much harder to clear these days and having sorted
through and removed a few which were possibly not quite legal (for reasons of
copyright, not subject matter!) and a few more that were just not playable due
to tea stains there were still around 100 DVDs.
Another Grandson has requested a couple of Clint Eastwood box-sets that
he had given his grandfather and we have decided to keep around ten for
ourselves (including The Omen and The Evil Dead). We have largely moved to Blu-ray ourselves
and sold most of our DVDs so these ten now make up around a quarter of all DVDs
we have. The rest we will attempt to
sell at the car-boot sale and at 50p for most we will be undercutting just
about every other person selling DVDs.
Any left will then be donated to charity.
A few days later my next tasks were the destruction of
furniture and the lifting of carpets as well as helping with lifting and
carrying on a few tip runs. Most of the
furniture being destroyed was nothing to get excited about but there was one sideboard/cabinet
that I was genuinely sorry to smash to pieces, therapeutic though it was. I couldn’t date it, could have been as early
as 1950s but possibly as late as 1970s it had a retro rather than vintage or
antique look. It was a big bugger too,
possibly five feet wide and apart from the feet being missing was in fairly
good condition. Our problem was
time. The landlords want the bungalow emptied
and cleaned by the end of next week (and we are all back at work then) or they
will start charging the estate, which means us.
There was no time to advertise for anyone to buy or even take for free
as we needed it out of the bungalow so we could lift carpets and clean and even
charities, if interested, would take weeks to come and collect. If we had room and it matched our furniture
we’d have had it but we don’t and it didn’t. So I took a mallet to it. I smashed that mother to pieces in five
minutes flat. The wood was then taken to
the recycling centre where it will be sold on (good news for council tax
payers), processed and will probably end up in some posh git’s new kitchen. Still, it is very sad that such a cute piece
of furniture had to be destroyed because no service exists to quickly remove it
for recycling as itself; I wonder how much other furniture from rented homes goes the same way.
The carpets did initially seem to be a fairly easy job as
they had not been tacked down and they lifted easily. Carpets?
You remember I mentioned the tiled floor earlier, why am I now going on
about carpets? The floor was indeed
tiled in both of the main rooms and with a bit of work this would have looked gorgeous
with perhaps a few well-placed rugs around. At some point, however, somebody had placed
carpet over the tiles; I’m not sure if this was Tony or another but it wasn’t
the best quality carpet. I’m no expert
but I’ve always been advised to get separate carpet and underlay. This was foam-backed carpet and as I lifted
it became obvious that the foam had disintegrated and had become stuck to the
floor in some places, little more than powder in others. Getting the carpets up took a couple of
minutes, scraping the residue of foam off the floor and sweeping up the Sahara of
formerly-foam has so far taken a couple of hours and is not yet finished. The carpets themselves were in a poor condition
and have been taken to the tip along with two old, still working TVs of the not
flat screen variety that can’t even be given away these days; one of them was
the one we gave Tony about six years ago and I’d forgotten how heavy and unwieldy
it was.
My only other task to date has been going through some of
Tony’s personal effects to see what can be sold and this has been a quite endearing
task. The daughters and grandsons had
already requested a few items each for sentimental reasons and I found myself
also wanting to keep things to remember him by.
I have decided to keep a set of cufflinks which I think he wore to our
wedding; two pairs of my own will go to the car-boot sale instead. I don’t smoke but his tobacco tin with a
horse on it had clearly been in use so I’ve kept that. There were also a few serendipitous moments;
a knob on our cooker had broken and Tony had a spare cooker knob, not matching
but workable so now we can use our grill again!
The knob did not match his own cooker so why he had it… who knows? Also I’d been looking for the old style
glass, dimpled beer tankards to drink dark beer out of and couldn’t find what I
wanted anywhere. I now have three, one
with a horse on it, courtesy of Tony. I’ve
swapped my wallet for one he had even though I’m not sure he had used it, mine
was more functional but I just want to be able to say this was his. Finally, there was an old Timex sports watch,
not working, no strap, worth bugger all.
But I want to get it working, put a suitable strap on it and wear
it. Again, I’m not sure whether it was a
watch he owned or something he picked up thinking he could make money from it,
either way it will remind me of him.
The task is now almost complete at least as far as clearing
the bungalow is concerned, still some cleaning to do and a washing machine
(faulty) to dispose of. There is lots of
broken up furniture and rusty old tools to take to the tip, at least three runs
in a little Toyota Starlet. My
Sister-in-law has all the tools that may be usable to go through, clean up and
then possibly sell but that may require another car-boot sale; we already have more
than enough for one. Soon, very soon,
the little bungalow in Chidham will be empty, the landlords will no doubt do it
up and someone will be moved in (sort the bathroom out you bastards). I think that before we started clearing it
out I’d only been in the bungalow twice, both times to help deliver heavy
items. I think it’s fair to say that
though this was Tony’s home for some time it’s not the home his daughters grew
up in and will remember him from so though it will be sad to see it empty it
won’t be the saddest of all the sad things that have happened recently. I can say though that whenever I walk, cycle
or drive by I will wonder who is in there now and I will remember Tony. It really is a lovely little bungalow.
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