Clearing Out

Clearing Out ©

By Michael Casey

We all clear out from time to time, our children never clear out, they keep everything. If you look under a child’s bed you will find many many things, I’m sure Dippy the Dinosaur lived under my daughter’s bed for at least two years, either that or my daughter needed more fibre in her diet. Odd shoes and various bits of school uniform are abandoned under a child’s bed, as are half eaten jam sandwiches and half-drunk bottles of fizzy pop. Though it might just be that Paddington Bear has sneaked into your house and is living under the bed. Perhaps as your child’s lodger, living in a storage box.

Grown-ups have lots of rubbish too, they never leave it under the bed, apart from discarded dirty underwear, or your lover’s clean but abandoned underware reminding you of your wild abandoned nights. Empty bottles of champagne, or Stella Artois cans litter the space under their bed. The rats in the cheap house where you live don’t eat the cheese in the traps, they just die of alcoholic poisoning, they are dead but with a smile on their face.

In the corner of one room where you the teacher mark all those boring papers is a pile of Sunday supplements which you hope to read when you finish all the boring marking and lesson planning. Lesson Planning sounds like some Norwegian scientist who knows all there is to know about Global Warming, as for Global Warming that sounds like some Chinese billionaire, if only we were one of my relatives, he is from Shanghai after all.

So you, me, us accumulate, accumulate means too lazy to throw out, we hoard all our rubbish. You never know when it might come in useful. I collect electrical plugs or cables, as you never know when they might come in useful. I don’t just bin an old hairdryer, I have to first castrate it by cutting off its plug, or if it’s from an old radio, I keep the entire cable.

Cups and saucers seem to breed in our kitchen cupboard, if one of the family has a new cup then they’ll give us their old one. Then there are novelty ones which I buy or the kids buy or are given as presents for Christmas or Birthdays. The famous Love Bird tea set was the first set I had when I set up home, now those Love Birds seem to have filled the cupboard with bastard cuckoo mugs everywhere, maybe 20 of them. Have they not heard of contraception or do they think it’s a Mexican folk singer.

Coats seem to breed too, as we always keep the one we were replacing as there might be a bit more wear in the old one, so now we have 2 coats, or 3 or 4 depending on your fashion needs. My wife has said when I die all my clothes will go to the Charity Shop, we have 13 at least where I live. So my parting will have a supply of tent like clothes becoming available to all and sundry, All and Sundry sounding like the owner of a Kebab shop, and yes we have many of those where I live.

If we can finally find a house we can all agree on, then the biggest clear-out ever will begin. I would be first on the skip outside the house, but my wife cannot lift me, so I’m safe for now. I may have to leave some of my plugs behind, or any of my underpants where the elastic has given up the battle against my derriere. My old shoes will have to be abandoned, or rather left in the street for even poorer people to take.  

Any cracked crockery will be left behind too, the Love Birds are over 30 years old, maybe they’ll produce more crockery if we just leave them behind too.

Any sadnesses will be left behind too, it’s pointless bringing them with us, start afresh, new hopes and new dreams.  Just remember to put all the bolts in the bed before we use it, otherwise Padding Bear could be in for a surprise.