OH and I have just been having a coffee and have both been completely taken by surprise at how upset we are on hearing the news about Terry Wogan - after all, we never knew him personally. We were reminiscing about the Radio 2 Breakfast show, and how we used to both set off for work in the morning, in completely opposite directions, some days depending on where I was working well over 100 miles apart. We each knew the other was listening to TW so it extended the link between us in the mornings, and in the evenings there would often be a conversation started with "did you hear TW say...such and such this morning?" His programme is intrinsically linked with both of our uk working lives.
Many of you know that prior to moving here 19 years ago I had a very happy career in the NHS for just short of 25 years. I did not return to the uk for 11.5 years - for the first few years we were too broke for anything except necessities, then after that I had Little or no interest. What drew me back after all those years was the news that the site where I used to work had been bought by developers, and all the buildings were to be demolished to make way for an exclusive housing estate. I came back for three days for a final look at it , and as a friend's husband drove us away (she had also worked there for many years, as had her mother before her) we were both in floods of tears, and had actually stroked the walls of the building before we left.
In the back of one of my cupboards there is a coffee mug. The glaze on the inside is completely worn away from the stirrings of probably thousands of cups of coffee, and on the outside the pattern is completely faded. It is my old work mug, and accompanied me through countless office and hospital moves. Now too hideous to use, but I couldn't part with it, and was so upset when it got accidentally broken when being moved a few weeks back, that OH actually glued it back together for me. If someone else went through that cupboard they would wonder why on earth such an ancient and unuseable mug hadn't been thrown out years ago.
Everyone can totally understand anyone hanging on to things associated with a dearly loved friend or family member, such as photos or belongings , which acquire anímate status because of their previous owners, but a building is just that - bricks and mortar. A coffee mug is just a piece of china, and the voice of TW just emanated from a radio, he was not a live being in our lives. Yet my attachment to these inanimate objects is still fiercely intense. It's not as if I am unhappy with my present life - couldn't be more opposite, and have a need to hang on to a past which I may perceive as being happier. Perhaps its just a need to preserve aspects of the past, and a wish for it to remain untouched by time.
Do you have similar feelings for material things, which you have not parted with that have nothing to do with any individual person, or your home, but to a time or aspect of your life?
Links with the past.
Many of you know that prior to moving here 19 years ago I had a very happy career in the NHS for just short of 25 years. I did not return to the uk for 11.5 years - for the first few years we were too broke for anything except necessities, then after that I had Little or no interest. What drew me back after all those years was the news that the site where I used to work had been bought by developers, and all the buildings were to be demolished to make way for an exclusive housing estate. I came back for three days for a final look at it , and as a friend's husband drove us away (she had also worked there for many years, as had her mother before her) we were both in floods of tears, and had actually stroked the walls of the building before we left.
In the back of one of my cupboards there is a coffee mug. The glaze on the inside is completely worn away from the stirrings of probably thousands of cups of coffee, and on the outside the pattern is completely faded. It is my old work mug, and accompanied me through countless office and hospital moves. Now too hideous to use, but I couldn't part with it, and was so upset when it got accidentally broken when being moved a few weeks back, that OH actually glued it back together for me. If someone else went through that cupboard they would wonder why on earth such an ancient and unuseable mug hadn't been thrown out years ago.
Everyone can totally understand anyone hanging on to things associated with a dearly loved friend or family member, such as photos or belongings , which acquire anímate status because of their previous owners, but a building is just that - bricks and mortar. A coffee mug is just a piece of china, and the voice of TW just emanated from a radio, he was not a live being in our lives. Yet my attachment to these inanimate objects is still fiercely intense. It's not as if I am unhappy with my present life - couldn't be more opposite, and have a need to hang on to a past which I may perceive as being happier. Perhaps its just a need to preserve aspects of the past, and a wish for it to remain untouched by time.
Do you have similar feelings for material things, which you have not parted with that have nothing to do with any individual person, or your home, but to a time or aspect of your life?
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire