In the house where I grew up my dad spent most of his free time
in a room we called ‘The Study’. If that
sounds terribly middle-class, it must be because it was. It was a spare bedroom really, but it had the
airing cupboard in it - and the central
heating pipes and pumps held noisy
parties inside it every night, so you wouldn’t want to sleep there.
I’m wondering now if the room ever got vacuumed or dusted; it
wasn’t easy to navigate. It was shelved from floor to ceiling on two sides and
in the middle there was a 1950s kitchen table, with blue formica top and metal
legs, not that you could tell. Just like
the other makeshift cupboards around the room, its surface was buried under ‘stuff’.
By stuff I mean….well, for example, every single periodical that
my dad had ever bought since 1959. I
can’t be certain but they had names like Practical
Oscillator and Illustrated
Semiconductor. The sort with pictures
of nude wires and semi-clad magnetic tape on their covers.
Then there were
bent coathangers
(could come in handy one day)
a collection of used milk bottle tops (could come in handy one
day)
dismantled plugs (could come in…. etc. etc. - I’m boring
myself)
ball valves, soldering irons, a lovely black and gold Singer
sewing machine, a beer-making kit, a hostess trolley and a manual typewriter
missing the E key.
Empty chocolate boxes, the inner workings of old biros, a kettle without a lid.
Shall I carry on?
A home-made – home-made! by my dad! - ‘tumbler’ device for polishing pebbles - which was endlessly whirring, rotating and
clattering like a washing machine full of stones (which it basically was) yet not one pebble came out shiny, ever. Why did people want shiny pebbles in the
‘70s anyway? Just to be displayed in
saucers on windowsills?
Broken radios,
unidentified amplifying objects, spent matches, dried up Polyfilla, ping pong bats….
The irony is that I don’t think anything in that room ever
actually came in useful apart from the noisy airing cupboard, and my lasting
memory of its true worth was that it was where my mum once put a very weak newborn
guinea pig to keep it warm, wrapped in a
towel in a box. I came home from school to find this, much to my delight. She (the baby guinea pig) happily survived and
went on to live with us for several years, in a hutch in the shed. Which is really where all the other above stuff should have been kept all along.
Hi C how you doing? Old Ma is a bit of a collector, never throws anything out, me I never keep anything,especially money. I remember in the 60's my father used to get a publication I think called Cable and Wireless. never once thought about that until today. So there!
ReplyDeleteHi Old Pa, thanks for popping by, hope all good with you. I think Cable and Wireless was one of the magazines that came through our letterbox too... it sounds familiar!
DeleteI hope Old Ma has her collecting under control! I'm of the belief that we should try to only keep the best and most special of things we've ever owned or we just drown. Clutter and hoarding too much of a sore point at the moment - my dad and his wife are in serious trouble at the moment and it's largely (though not entirely) because of this tendency - so feelings running rather high on the subject at the moment! I think I wrote this post as therapy, can certainly see where it all started!
I immediately want to have a poke around the study of your youth. Brings to mind many a happy teenage hour spent pouring over the Maplin catalogue, ordering bits. I made my own amp, repaired the broken volume control on the B&W portable TV, built a descending note (bing-bung-bong) doorbell that is still in active service at my parents house... oh, I was pretty handy with a soldering iron, in my youth. And once I treated myself to a solder sucker (try not to laugh, it was one of these) there was no stopping me. Happy days.
ReplyDeleteOh Martin, wish you could have helped my sister, cousin and I clear out my aunt and uncle's house a little while back (uncle being my dad's brother so having a lot in common re. the love of electronics). It had four rooms chock full of this sort of stuff! Loads and loads of radio and electronic components dating back decades and probably a whole catalogueful of Maplin products, you could've had your pick. Not sure your family would have appreciated it though.....!
DeleteI am most impressed at the things you made. How cool to be able to build your own amp!
And now I know what a solder sucker is too. Not that I'll ever need one...
And now this, today: Maplin going into administration!
DeleteThat's a weird coincidence!
DeleteYour Dad's study sounds very like the room we had to clear out in my father-in-law's house when he passed away. There was great home office type piece of furniture that folded up into a big box shape but could be opened out and had a desk, drawers, little cubby holes for every bit of stationery imaginable - Was sad to see it go but just couldn't keep it. As for all the periodicals etc (from the '50s onwards) they were on shelves on the walls. Must be something about men of that vintage (although as you know I also keep everything!).
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear you also had a guinea pig. We still had two until last year - Funny little things. All body and tiny little legs!
That sounds like a lovely piece of furniture for the sheer pleasure of having lots of little compartments. There's something really charming and perhaps quite romantic about that sort of thing, the idea of lots of little drawers, etc. - almost as if it could contain secrets, or treasure, or magic doors. Or maybe I'm just getting a bit carried away now....
DeleteYes, agree about the vintage. I guess the idea of collecting physical publications for reference is long gone now with everything being available at the click of a mouse, but I do like looking through old mags (whatever genre) for the historic detail, especially adverts.
Guinea pigs are so sweet, aren't they? Yes, all sausage-shaped body and short legs, with cute ears too. I loved that burbling noise they make!
Great post. My dad was a joiner by trade (and a car auctioneer too... and a farmer) so he had an enormous shed (longer than most houses) that was full of boxes of similar junk, though I don't think he ever hoarded magazines.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rol. Now that I like: an enormous shed. Out of the way of the house, not causing any problems re. space for normal daily functioning, cleaning, moving about, etc. - just an external dedicated space for 'stuff'. And I'm such a fan of sheds!
DeleteCan't help but wonder what happened to it all, though....?
It was slowly taken over by his grandson (also a joiner) and eventually replaced by a much bigger "workshop" which is still full of old junk...though I'm not sure how much of it was inherited from grandad.
DeleteMy Dad's study was similar but less full of bits and bobs that might come in useful and more piles and piles of books, newspapers, magazines etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure some of them could come in useful too but where would you find the ones you need when you need them? Or were they meticulously catalogued and filed - a library!
DeleteHa , just done a related post .Can you use any tinned tomatoes ?
ReplyDeleteA great post too! Think my dad's hoarding tendencies have left me with the opposite so our kitchen cupboards are pretty sparse really. Mind you we do love tinned tomatoes...
DeleteMy Dad had a room like this in the basement. It was for his ‘70s-very early ‘80s hobby... the CB. Was that a thing in your part of the world? Every Dad had one then because of the popularity of the movie Smokey and the Bandit. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking it must be a Dad-thing!
DeleteAs for CB - yes I remember it catching on over here too for a while, it was the film 'Convoy' that did it. Mostly taken up by hairy lorry-drivers and radio geeks I believe - but perhaps the real forerunner to internet/texting/and some of the things we're doing here now when I think about it. We all have our 'handles'!