Chucking out memories

How hard it is to throw things away!

Today we have been in the garage clearing up all those things that were carefully stowed away just in case we might need them again.

First it was necessary to get up in the garage loft to dispense with the things we had put up there last time we cleared out the garage. So out went some decorative glass shelving, a broom handle, an old snooker cue with a chip in it, an underwater pump from when we had a pond, my waders with perished rubber from when we had a pond, baskets for planting water lilies (from when we had a pond), hundreds of old flower pots, the remnants of hanging baskets, a pair of dumb-bells, a game of Scrabble with pieces missing, a net for chipping golf balls into, various bicycle pieces including a tire and inner tube, some gears and brakes and a pedal or two, a half-used box of pre-seed lawn fertilizer and seven plastic imitation Grecian urns that were used as plant holders.

Elevated from the garage to the loft went a host of children's garden toys. Pedal cars, see-saws, tricycles, bicycles, wheelbarrows, space-hoppers, paddling pools, sand trays, scooters - throwing those away will be a lot harder. Perhaps the grandchildren will use them when they come to stay.

When I last threw away a few hundred paperbacks I took down the shelving that they were stacked on. Today I removed the wooden shelves from the metal struts, but stored the wood on the perhaps mistaken ambition of floor-boarding the house loft someday.

Then all the discarded rubbish, together with cardboard and polystyrene packing was bagged up, put in the back of the station wagon and taken to the recycling center.

A good day's work and much tidier, but only half the job done. Nostalgia and memories have halted the process.