An archaeological dig is what it felt like to go to my lock-up yesterday and browse through my old stuff.
All of my Dutch possessions were transferred from my flat to this lock-up when I first went to America in March 2000. In 2001, all of the stuff that had been in my ex-girlfriend’s parents’ loft in London since 1991 arrived in Amsterdam to be added to the contents of the lock-up. I was still in America, of course.
At this point, all of my worldly goods were now in storage in Amsterdam, except for the few boxes I had had sent to America when it had become apparent that I wouldn’t be returning to Europe any time soon.
So, it came as something of a shock when, some months later, word reached me that the storage facility where my belongings were being held, had (been) burned down. As I walked down Market Street in San Francisco, past people pushing all of their material possessions out in front of them in a shopping trolley, it occurred to me that some of these tramps now had more tangible items to their name than did I.
Some time later, it transpired that not all of the storage units had been lost in the fire. Some had survived the fire, only to be severely damaged by the efforts to extinguish the blaze. Perhaps some stuff had even survived the water.
My ex-girlfriend inspected the damage in my absence and reported that a lot of stuff was smoke- and/or water-damaged, but some stuff had also survived relatively or, in some cases, completely intact.
Once we had bought a new house and settled into it last year, there was really no excuse not to go to the lock-up and sort out the stuff there, but I couldn’t bring myself to go and behold the scene of destruction that I knew would be waiting for me.
You see, in the intervening years I had forgotten much of what I owned, so I wasn’t in a position to miss it. I knew, however, that if I were to become reacquainted with it, it would bring memories flooding back, so I was in no hurry to be reminded of things that had once occupied a place in my life, but which were now either destroyed or severely damaged.
With the move to the new house, I’ve decided that I need to finally get my act together and clear out the lock-up. That process started a few weeks ago with a couple of boxes of my old comics, which, thanks to my having religiously bagged every one of them in protective plastic sleeves, had survived their ordeal very well. A few had been ruined by moisture, but most were intact.
Yesterday, I went there again, spurred on by the half-empty state of our recently purchased antique bookcase, which somehow suggested an air of contempt on the part of its owners. The bookcase deserved to be filled; and what better way to fill it than with one’s own books?
And so I brought back a lot of my old books, still packed in the Titan Distributors (a dreadful place and the last one I worked before leaving England) boxes that I placed them in back in, what, 1991? These are books that I hadn’t set eyes on in sixteen years. Amongst their ranks are many obscure titles and limited editions, in many cases signed by the authors. It was cool to see them again after so many years, especially since they had survived the experience of trial by fire and water intact. Indeed, the only damage is slight indentation in the slipcases, due to the weight of the books having been stored horizontally for many years.
I went back today again, as I haven’t yet managed to find all of my books. There’s so much debris to sort through, however, that the full car-load I came back with today was almost entirely rubbish that I just dumped outside for the bin-men. Only one of the boxes in the car contained stuff that was actually salvageable.
Even after emptying this new box, there are still titles that I’m missing. I’m hoping that one or two more boxes are still in the lock-up, hidden behind all of the boxes containing mouldering, soot-coated clothing and other decomposing belongings. That stuff has been festering away for six years. Ugh.
Anyway, the bookcase looks nice now and is almost filled to capacity.
I remember packing this stuff in ’91 and thinking to myself, ‘One day, maybe a long time from now, maybe I’ll be lucky enough to have the time and the environment in which to sit down and read through all of that stuff.’ Perhaps that day has finally arrived or perhaps, with one young daughter and another child on the way, I’m actually further away from my dream than ever before.