Home

While driving towards HOME yesterday, although still in another country, I glazed in and out of a programme on Radio 4 with regard to what people term as home. It was interesting but as I was on the fourth traffic diversion, very tired and really quite lost - certainly as a human, not necessarily as On The Planet, (it was only Surrey, after all) I afforded it only my partial concentration.
Young people in California were earnestly talking about living in communal 'pods' - no curtains, no stuff, everyone logged in, charged up and information freely flowing about everything they had ever done, were doing and would be doing.
I suddenly felt very old; old and attached to my Home full of pictures and objects, dust, dogs and us - a place you can go and draw curtains, or clack back shutters and batten down for the evening. Less so in the summer of course when The Home is more for basic necessities like sleeping when the light finally slopes off for the night.
Maybe being young in California, there is no need of the shackles of cosy, your familiar book collection and favourite awful pyjamas; they may have never had to wait for a delayed train on a drizzly evening on Clapham Junction station platform, pining for tomato soup and the four walls called home.
A new style of living was talked of by several people on the programme - a life decluttered - wherever I hang my air-book case, that's my home; no need of stuff, everything on The Cloud; books, objects, photos, photos of things you once owned - gone.
I like stuff; not all of it - there will be another point where we precis down and hand on to Oxfam or the French equivalent, many, many black bags, but things that hold real memories seem valuable to me: the stuffed crocodile my mother bought me as we couldn't have a real one, things that we took on when Mark's parents died that had been treasured by them; their books, objects, instruments and photos.
There is nothing like a book of photographs as opposed to the endless screen-stored mass. Mark's sister recently gave him a beautifully made book of images gleaned from the family library of his father - a precious thing.
I'd like to make this blog into a book, just to have it a tangible object, everything encapsulated in paper and card, forever (whatever that is . . .) and then there's always the possible demise of The Web of course; the eventual point where the storage of seven g-zillion images of people grinning inanely in front of the Le Tour Eiffel becomes too much for the rugby-pitch-size storage units and it all suddenly implodes.

Wikipedia - The Digital Dark Age is a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical electronic documents and multimedia.

A few objects and books might become rather interesting then . . .

Anyway, I ramble - maybe one day we will see the beauty of No Things, decide to give it all away and occupy something tiny, such as an airstream caravan, but even then the caravan, roulotte or small shed would soon become full of dried flowers from walks, rocks of special significance, books, photos, dogs . . .

                                                 
     
                                                               dogs, books and instruments