Day Off

Largely, sitting in the yarden, reading the paper and drinking coffee.
I flicked some bright orange slugs off the pea shoots but I think they have destroyed them already; read a bit of Nils Stevenson's diaries (so sad, to read about someone's youth and know they are no longer here), and lugged three heavy boxes and a fishtank from storage.
So here's a big bag of Duplo (fantastic stuff!); all the Chefs and Helen and the Horns master tapes (forgot all about them!); and original Biba 'newspaper' from their High Street Kensington store; an odd Leo Baxendale story called Thrrrrp; invites from the Breakfast Club for cartoonists that James Sillavan used to run in various cafes in South London (wonder what happened to him?); a collection of Offsprog Two's school books; a dolls' tea-set, upside-down rag doll and a toy video camera that really works.
What a nuisance it all is, but so interesting!
As I write, next door's garden resounds with the strains of 'Happy Birthday'. Bless! Their baby is two today, and I plucked up the courage to ask them what their names are; they told me when I moved in a year and a half ago but I was so stressed at the time I instantly forgot!
Here we go again... a whole sheaf of Songbird posters that I drew for the club I used to run with Diana Mavroleon; posters for gigs I'd forgotten about; an Oilily catalogue that I kept because I loved the colours; a Bus Stop carrier bag (remember that boutique?) stuffed to the gills with letters from Norwegian teenagers I met at an international camp in Bellingham, Northumberland in the 1980s. What fun it was! The Norwegians were very naughty and fed the Belgians laxative chocolate and stood outside the loos laughing. We went on day trips, played stupid games, and swam in a pool that became stinkier and stinkier until it was unbearable to use any more. I have found my collection of garish packets- a purple foil Playtex ad from a tube that they used the sell the bras in (I used to be a skip hound and plundered the skips behind the shop I used to work in in Brighton. I had a full size wicker dummy, beautifully made, and piles of lipstick samples in every shade from scarlet to black). Eastern European iron boxes, flattened toy wrappings, it's all there to be thrown away (or kept).
There's not much left there in the storage unit now: four or five boxes of mint-condition vinyl Helen and the Horns albums, some boxes of LPs and videos and a small wooden trunk that belonged to a grand-relative that will go into the loft.
You wouldn't believe how much stuff I gave away, threw away and sold when I moved.