Should I keep or should I throw now . . .

                                                           https://kateahardy.com/

In some ways I love moving house. Yes, it's exhausting, stressful, sad, exhilarating and never ending - if you have a fair amount of stuff, as we do. The 'I love moving' element is the purging of accumulated afore-mentioned stuff - where allowed to . . . Mark is a bit of a hoarder; all relevant or in some cases, nostalgic things, but I'd happily throw out more. He is a musician however, and not a piccolo player - piano, accordion, cello, percussion, etc, as well as an academic so the piles and stacks of papers, books, records and associated items are difficult to part with. 

He's done well so far, especially in tackling his hoard of 'every program of any music event he has ever been to'. There were I think fifty box files of pamphlets, A4 sheets and books all stretching back to his adolescent years and up to the present date. He's culled the collection to fifteen, and I think he would admit it was in some ways a cathartic experience.

Last time we moved I took several van fulls of stuff to charity shops and the tip - probably partly things we had brought with us from a previous and less purge-worthy move - the one where we left the UK and the panic before the move was such that a lot of what-the-hell-is-this . . . what-shall-I do-with-it things remained with us.

I've managed to part with a mass of objects that have been with me since London styling days; brocante props and other boot sale finds along the years. I may still do that teashop/book shop/antique den but I'm fed up with seeing the potential stock, move after move, so it's going and has already gone partly to a story-worthy dealer who rubbed his hands in a Heep like fashion as he went around the house leaving no bit of china unturned. 

My stacks of manuscripts were burned in a sort of ceremony before the last move and I'll probably do it again this time, just keeping the most recent copies - it's somehow worrying to part with them but what's the point of holding onto all those earlier edits and junked ideas . . .  unless I suddenly become intensely famous in which case . . . nope. It's all going.

And then there's the 'Hey! the copy of techniques des autopsies that I found in a boot sale for 2 euros is listed at 350 euros on Abe books.' Plus all the other old 'could be worth something' books we own. I tried a few attempts at selling online but unless you are in the dealer world it's a soul crushingly waste of time. So . . . techniques des autopsies with its delightful and gruesome 1920s drawings will probably come with us along with many other books until we open that teashop/bookshop/antique emporium . . .

                                                          Mark sorting through his box files

          Do I really need old list-diary books . . . and scraps of lyrics. Nope, photo, then bin . . .

Two ferrets and a Soda Stream

Nope - not a new Curtis film, the result of going early to a Vide Grenier (car-boot/yard-sale) this morning - not that perhaps anyone else would have bought ancient taxidermy specimens. (Except Andy, if you read this). Five euros a piece - s'got be a bargain! The soda stream has yet to be tried but I can't see there's much to go wrong there.

                                 

So, what else has this season's scavenging unearthed? It's been a good few Sundays - last week procuring several shirts for Mark at a euro each. Actually, this is odd - how we always seem to find him shirts as he's not exactly a standard Southern France man shape, more Nordic, Viking, even.
Last weekend also resulted in clothes for me, a huge salad platter, an exceptionally nice etching for 5 euros, teapots to replace broken ones, a 1970s wall-hanging to funk-up Mark's music room and various other (mostly) useful items. Why anyone bothers to shop for new stuff is a mystery to me - OK I draw the line at certain things like . . . underwear, and . . . that's about it. Maybe not a second-hand pressure cooker - bit scary.
 A bit scary, is also how much stuff we, the human race - or at least the members of it who have manufactured all these non-vital things - have managed to accumulate over a relatively short period of time. This was just one small amassing of a few folk's spare room rubbish, in one small French village. Imagine all the millions of boot sales and variants of, all over the world. Eek. We are indeed heading towards a possibly not too distant new Earth-Epoch - Plasticusgallusossum era, perhaps. A plastic and chicken bone sedimentary layer. The end of the consumers.
Oo, dear, this is getting a tad dark.
Time for a cup of tea in one of our new 1970s brown teapots.



                 Suitably apocalyptic and lovely etching from a couple of Sundays back.