My family lived in the house prior to the one in which I currently reside between November 1965 and June 1972 (when we flitted), but because I still attended the secondary school across the road and hung out with pals in the evenings at the neighbourhood shops a stone's throw away, I didn't really miss it (didn't have a chance to I guess) until around a dozen or so years later, after we had again moved to yet another house in 1983.
Hold on a minute, you say. If we moved to another house in 1983, how can I yet be living in the one we were in prior to moving? Easy - we moved back (sans brother) just over four years later, as regular readers will doubtless be sick fed up reading by now. However, I still knew a few people in the area of my '65-'72 house, and during the '90s would occasionally visit one of my old boyhood pals, who'd lived two rows behind me when we yet stayed there. He'd left the family home for a few years, but returned when a relationship had ended, living there with his father and sister.
In 1997, upon the death of his father, he and his sister had to move, but a couple or so weeks before, he'd given me an ornament of a Highland bull, I think. (Judge for yourselves from the photo above - excuse the dust.) It's horns were broken, so I took it home and repaired and repainted them. My father had recently had two or three spells in hospital, but on one of his returns home (not that he knew it would prove temporary) as he cast his eye around the room taking in familiar objects, he spotted the repaired bull sitting atop a display cabinet where I'd placed it.
"Where did that bull come from?" I heard him ask my mother while I was in the kitchen, who informed him that I had brought it in. I think he had only been back in the house a few days, possibly a week, when he was again hospitalised for the final time, never making it home again. I appreciated my pal giving me that bull, because it was a link to my old neighbourhood, likely having sat in my pal's living room while I yet lived in the area as a child - it connected me to the place in a tangible way.
Now it has another significance, in that it was the last 'new' household item my father ever laid eyes upon before he passed away. I doubt that he would've viewed it in the same way as me, as a link to the past, and though I never got to explain to him where it had come from, I'm glad he got to see it and sort of 'welcome' it into the house before he himself left it for the final time.
So I look at that old bull now and again and it reminds me of my old house, my old neighbourhood, my old pal (and his old house), and my old dad. Funny the significance an ornament can have, isn't it? Do you have any old ornaments or items that hold any special significance or associations for you, Criv-ite chums? Feel free to share in the comments section.
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4 comments:
I've got a sherry glass which is the last one of a set my father bought circa 1977. And a beer mug which my sister bought around 1986 and a half-pint measuring jug which my mother made gravy in (that jug is probably older than I am).
Betcha wouldn't part with them for any amount of dosh, CJ. Do you think of your family when you're using the items, or even when you just look at them?
Yes, they always remind me of my long departed family members and, as you say, I could never part with them. I'll be using the sherry glass over the festive period and I'll be making some shandy in the beer glass because we always had shandy at Christmas in my childhood, so I like to keep up the tradition :)
See, you're really a sentimental ol' softie after all, CJ. Good on yer, guv'nor.
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