Personal Effects - How Little We Need

 

There’s a small box in the attic. It contains the last of the personal effects of my late aunt. Things have reduced over time. She passed away in 1998 and for many years I kept her paperwork. After about twenty years, I shredded most of it, keeping only important, historical or sentimental documents. Items of costume jewellery includes a mink brooch which I remember from my childhood. They were fashionable once, horrible now. I can’t part with the bits and pieces of her Catholic faith, her wall-hanging crucifix and her statue of Christ which was placed on her bedside table. The Jesus statue was a wedding gift from the priest, I believe. I’ve also kept a few old black and white photos that mean nothing to me, but were something to her, so they stay, for now. Anyway, that’s it. The remaining possessions of a life spanning seventy-four years, or thereabouts, neatly placed in a box only slightly bigger than an average shoe-box and stored in the home of her first niece. That could be me, one day. I think I should speak to my niece. There isn’t a box large enough for all my personal effects. Things can shrink, though.

Books, of which I have many, can be stored on a Kindle, or similar. Photos, again lots of them, can live on pen-drives. Music, my collection of vinyl and CDs can be digitalised. Not for me, though. I like real books on shelves, to feel pages and see the different prints and fonts. I don’t care if anyone calls me old-fashioned.

My house is my home. It’s not quite how I like it because I’ve packed away most of the non-essential things, ornaments and pictures, ready for putting the house up for sale. No, it hasn’t happened yet and I’m still going on about it. The sooner, the better, but there are obstacles still in the way. Considering that so much has gone into a storage unit, there is no empty space here to speak of.

Compared to home, we manage with very little on our caravan. Unfortunately, it hasn’t had much use over the summer due to present circumstances. Instead, we managed a mid-week break to a hotel in Cheshire, with all necessary personal effects for both of us, in one, middle-sized suitcase.

My Haiku,

A box in the loft
Auntie’s personal effects,
Left over from life.

Fond mem’ries remain
Which will always stay with me.
I look back and smile.

PMW 2026

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Happiness - available now in all shops

 

A short blog from me this week, as I’m in the throes of moving house – a process that concentrates the mind more than usual  about the folly of accumulating so much stuff!

Since time immemorial writers and thinkers have railed against a perception that their generation has gone beyond the pale in terms of its acquisitiveness, hedonism, skewed values and worship of Mammon to the exclusion of more spiritual pursuits. They have despaired at the shallowness and soulless materialism of their fellow human beings for believing that the route to happiness is through having possessions.

What on earth would Orwell, Ruskin, Confucius and co. make of the madness of the neo-liberals’ ordering of the world? Where an artificial ‘need’ for more and more possessions is manufactured, then the means of acquiring them is summarily withdrawn. And how did our once relatively tolerant society succumb, in such a short space of time, to the shameful scapegoating of immigrants, unemployed people and the poor generally, instead of identifying the true culprits for depressing the living standards of the majority – this ruthless government and its cronies in big business who pay poverty wages and fleece hapless citizens of exorbitant rents, food and fuel charges?

I will end with a poem written by Ian Thorpe, which is about the folly of remorselessly acquiring possessions as a means to achieving happiness.

The Aspirational

by Ian R Thorpe

May it be known
that we are what we own
Each measured by our possessions
 

After so many years
And an ocean of tears
We still haven’t learned any lessons.

In a civilisation
Driven by aspiration
to move upward in social position
Advancement of status
Is gained on the basis
Of realising material ambition

We start our accession
With the acquisition
Of a skateboard and DVD player
Progress to designer threads
Hair up in dreads
An illegal pharmacopoeia

You acquire your own gaff,
a millstone for life,
but it says you've arrived as a person
then you buy a sports hatch
and still don't spot the catch
though the burden of debt must be hurting.

Your standing will climb
When your kitchen design
Features red tiles and an AGA
And no - one will mind
you’re in organized crime
When your drink is Chablis and not lager

A picture of Mars
And a stick in a vase
A futon when you lie down to dream
A cow in a tank
An ethical bank
A therapist who tells you to scream

 

Books you never read,
A strange new - age creed
Wardrobe full of designer attire
A killer PC
A wide screen TV
All the objects of your desire

A new home in a loft
A remote Scottish croft
Or a gite in the distant Dordogne
Obsessive acquisition
To improve your position
Will inspire you upward and on

In life you acquire
Objects of desire
and the precious things all people need
These items you treasure
Because together they measure
The strength of your will to succeed.

Until you realise
all the things that you prize
have not brought you happiness
When the reckoning's done
you see that you've become,
enslaved by the things you possess

Thank you for reading.

Sheilagh

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