Today the sun drew me out to complete one of the last of the autumn gardening jobs and fill up the garden waste bin for the last time this year: cutting down the Virginia creeper that grows up our front wall at a frightening velocity. This on two, or maybe even three, occasions has proved to have been the cause of much drama and trauma. We execute this task jointly. My role is to balance high up on the ladder on one foot and lean over to cut through a particularly tough stem among the creeper. Deirdre’s task is to come out of the house and explain in a quiet, understanding and reasonable manner, that the phone has gone dead. I then go into meltdown, threaten to throw myself off the ladder or cut my veins with the secateurs in the noble Roman manner. She then phones Open Reach and employing her lilting Irish accent and endless charm, explains to a gruff engineer that there seems to be a fault on the line.
We have never yet had to pay for that repair, testimony to the mesmerising cadence of her voice. At a previous address our local garage mechanic, Big John, so called because he was big and his name was John, admitted that her telephone voice enchanted him; another tough man succumbing to that siren voice. I once tried to instruct Deirdre about how to change a wheel. When I sensed she wasn't listening she explained that what usually worked was standing beside the car and help invariably materialised. This didn't work on one occasion on a rainy night on the slip road at Junction 28 when she had to pay a three figure sum to join the RAC in order to get help. Having listened sympathetically I pointed out that we were already members of the AA
Misunderstanding seems to be the theme of today. The bedside radio started crackling strangely and went dead. We agreed on what sort of radio to buy as a Christmas present to replace it. It was also suspected that the microwave was faulty. Then there was a click and the electricity came back on. The microwave pinged cheerfully and the radio chirpily announced the departure of Dominic Cummings from 10 Downing St. It was one of those amusing little electrical peccadilloes that Crich is prone to.
The prospect of replacing these items was avoided, but it had already stirred in me that sense of guilt about what to do with old electrical equipment. I can’t face seeing all this metal and circuit boards going into landfill. There’s always the thought that maybe someone will need it, maybe it can be repaired, maybe a charity will take it. So the decision is deferred and our loft has become a sort of limbo for obsolete electrical equipment awaiting final judgement. Numerous chargers, amplifiers, a turn-
table, a slide projector, cassette player, a radio, boxes of cassettes, a TV, a VHS video player, a router, a computer keyboard and until recently the old Amstrad computer which created a lot of the writing I’ve recently revived. This is not to mention a suitcase full of 1970s bridesmaid dresses and ball gowns.
Lockdown, of course presents us with an unrepeatable opportunity to sort and dispose of this stuff, like a rush of court sittings to pass final sentence on all these goods that have been on remand for so long. What lockdown hasn’t done, however is occasioned a character transformation – still the same procrastination, scrupulousness, indecision, lack of ruthlessness (could that be ‘ruth’?) and now added to it, knees, limbs, muscles, joints and tendons that are less inclined to crawl around in the loft. Perhaps I’ll just wait until the next pandemic.
Addendum .Now a very strange thing has happened.I decided to bring the step ladder in so I could just pop my head up through the loft trapdoor and take a picture of the clutter, just in case none of you have any of your own.In the process the soft Irish lilt wafted up to me like incense ascending into heaven.Would I bring down the old suitcase with the bridesmaid’s dresses?This involved crawling beneath the A-beam in a style of Caribbean limbo dance, a technique perfected by SAS Special Forces in their training. Incidentally, it’s two slide projectors I discover. So down the suitcase came.A huge flat suitcase in perfect condition apart from slightly rusted buckles. Someone ought to have a use for it, surely; but sadly it's the sort that one would never take on a plane nowadays, and which hasn’t been used since we returned from a year in the US in 1981 – now what’s to be done with it - it's even too big for the bin. Perhaps I can find a place for it in the garage.