Treasured

Things get lost, and sometimes they just turn up. If you are lucky.

I have always lived a cluttered life, collecting things like I couldn’t help myself, sometimes as if I had a duty to rescue the things that nobody else wanted. Or gave a value to.

Many of these things are still surround me, although I live a much more minimalist life these days. I have to.

One of the things that comes with becoming a full-time wheelchair user is that my apartment has to be kept clear of clutter, the kind of stuff that once upon a time would have just cumulated in piles.

Of course, I would have known what these piles consisted of, as everyone kids themselves they do.

I suppose I have tended only to keep the things that are most important to me, and that take-up least space.

When I had my apartment decorated when I first moved in, I chose what some people might consider to be an extreme minimalist style. Everything is painted white, ceilings have been smoothed from the way in which they had been stippled, and I suppose my concept has been the idea that I live in a white-walled gallery space, which I suppose is partly because I had been a collector of pictures as well as many other smaller items over the years.

I have many original pictures on my walls, but also many reproductions. I am fortunate to possess a printer that will print up to A1 in full color, from the days when I worked as a freelance graphic designer. The last work that I did before I stopped work completely.

But I still have the printer, and although difficult for me to use myself, because paper sizes above A3 must be hand fed, I have trained up one of my carers to be able to use this printer effectively.

Last year, in conjunction with another of my carers, we ran a charitable event to raise money for sustainable development projects in Lesotho, and my colleague purchased second hand picture frames from local charity shops, and I printed pictures that were copyright free, mainly scanned from some of the old books that I have collected over the years.

Containing hand coloured prints, or simply interesting engravings.

These we sold for the cost price plus whatever the purchaser wish to place as a value on the resulting pictures.

We raised over £120 simply by inviting people that we knew and that we thought would be interested in supporting what we were trying to do.

And so one would think that in my minimalist apartment with a laminated wooden floor throughout things would be easier to find. Think again.

One of my most favourite films disappeared several months ago, and only just suddenly turned up, thankfully, since it was recorded from television, and is one of those films impossible to get hold of. At all. It cannot even be borrowed from someone like LoveFilm.

It was made in 1947, and is called The Way To The Stars. On the surface, it is just another war film, but it is an extraordinarily unique film. I am very glad to have rediscovered it.

In the same way that Noel Coward’s film In Which We Serve opens with the declaration that this is the story of a ship, this film opens with the statement that this is the story of an airfield.

Derelict now, with all of the evidence of human occupation scattered around in the derelict buildings.

But in 1940...

I suppose what is most unusual about the film is that it includes a number of poems around which the plot is woven.

They have been specially written for the film, and in the film are supposed to have been written by one of the pilots using the airfield at the time.

They are good poems, in the context of the film. Perhaps not great poems, but I suppose as I consider myself to be a poet, I find the film fascinating. And it is a very good film.

A love story, of course, behind the surface story of a nation at war. But a love story nevertheless.

If you ever get the chance to see it, you should do so, but this might be difficult. As I have already said, I would have gladly replaced it when I thought I had lost it. But it seems it cannot be replaced.

Like so many of those small items that I still keep from the days when I would visit auctions, and buy boxes of things that were probably the result of a house clearance after the death of someone.

I have discovered some extraordinary things, like the handwritten and handmade book of poems which must be someone’s way of coping with the death of someone during the First World War.

It is dated 1917, and there is a name. And the writing is so precise and careful, on what looks as if it were handmade paper, bound into a book by a red ribbon.

Such personal items have no intrinsic value, that they are an extraordinary document of a life lived, and of a time past.

So. Lost and then found. And now, I hope never to be lost again, as I have been able to transfer it to my computer, as discussed in a previous blog. Much harder to lose.

I don’t think I will ever want to separate myself completely from those reminders of other people’s lives, just as in the opening scenes of the film, the camera focuses on the left behind evidence of the people that once used the derelict airfield. I think we all want to live some evidence that we once existed.