During the week I sat in a writing group circle responding to the prompt "think back to a bird moment – and free-write the first one that comes to mind". That was the trip-wire, that bit about the 'first one that comes to mind'. Unless something unbelievably awesome happens in the future, then I suspect the first bird moment to come to mind will always be the Seagull. And by "the Seagull", I naturally mean Johnathan Livingston who is alive and well and visiting sensitives and writers and the grieving and the striving all over the planet.
He came to me in May 2018 on a beach just outside Sheringham. I was scattering ashes. Or to be more accurate, not so much scattering as dumping. It was not elegant. I'm sure there's a knack to it, but not one I hope to have to learn. Anyway, I sat on the beach afterwards, and the seagull came, and did what seagulls do, then tipped his wings in salute and flew away to the west.
I have spoken and written about this so many times in the last three and a half years. And it is easy. It is just now part of who I am, part of the parting of the ways, that we always knew was coming, and I am comfortable with it all.
Except this week, as I told that story briefly, again, I barely held it together.
Seagulls have become a big part of my life. I have a beach hut now. I spend a lot of time photographing gulls. They are beautiful creatures and they get a bad press. But I'm not here to talk about gulls today, I'm here to explore one possible reason why, on this occasion, repeating the oft-told tale took me back into emotion.
I think it is because I am spending a lot of time just now touching the past. And I am touching some of it by way of saying farewell to it. I have opened the last of the "not now" boxes and I am going through the contents of it – and figuring out what to do with this little collection of family history – given that the family is not mine – but given also that I am the inheritor and custodian of it. And with that there comes an obligation.
And a fascination, a curiosity. The one thing I am sure of is that there is too much here that needs to be kept. I want it to stay with the house, because a couple of the last people with direct connection to these stories, stayed with the house. This was their last home, and it is through them that it is now my home. And I am an incurable romantic. There are stories here. And maybe they are stories that need to be told, but I don't feel like I am the person to tell them.
Of maybe I am just not 'yet' the person to tell them.
There is the story of the house itself – only the snippets I know from before my tenure.
There is the story of Joyce and Al – which I thought I knew, but two letters from Joyce to her mother in 1944 suggest there is more to that than was ever told to the child. And there is the ending of that story.
There is the story of Bob and Millie – oh wow, is there the story of Bob and Millie?!. This one is told in postcards between 1904 and 1908. A romance, with all the trials and tribulations of any romance, spits and spats and declarations of undying love, and (spoiler alert) a hint at an eventual elopement.
There is the story of John who enlisted in the army as a musician at the age of 14 years and 2 months, and was taught by the army in Writing (to and from dictation) and to do arithmetic and accounts, gaining his third class and second class educational certificates. John, who was discharged from the army 'before the war' (the 1914-18 war) as 'unfit for military service' – I have found no record why, only a confirmation dated 1916 that his discharge exempted him under "the current Bill" and he need not report for further examination. That clearly changed because there is another certificate confirming him as being "permanently unfit" for military service, this one dated 1918.
John, who sailed around the world as an assistant steward and bandsman. Who then played in theatres around the Midlands and East Anglia as a trumpeter and cornet player and received a letter of acknowledgement from Charles Chaplin.
Bob and John are certainly the same person: John Robert Long. Millie is equally certainly Amelia Jenelia Hoy Fisher. Later Amelia Long. There is a happy ending to this tale. They married, they had five children, they are my late partner Clive's grandparents - and they lived long and mostly happy lives.
There are also hints at the lives of aunts and uncles…a brother writing to a sister such a blessing to have found you… and of lovers on the point of parting…you are single, I am married…if I do not hear I will know where I stand.
There is Clive's early story – from the note from his primary school teacher alerting his mother to the fact that he might not be well –turned out he had TB – through his school days, books that should have been returned to the CNS over 50 years ago, and exam papers (with and withoutdoodles). It was being asked to contribute something on this that led me to open this last box and see what its secrets might be.
What do we do with such secrets?
Treasure them, is my response.
There were a few more things of Richard Meale's and they have been sent to the Pembroke Trust to join what was handed over during the summer, doing my best to keep that part of the legacy intact.
As for the rest I will box them up again, and put them away. I have said that I am putting them away forever, from my perspective, with no intention to re-visit these people who are as much strangers to me as they are to you, but for one or two of them who I did know, which feels like to tenuous a connection to hold on to, but equally too firm a one to let go. Who knows in the years to come, I may bring the box down again, and re-open the time capsule.
Maybe I will do that to go deeper into these stories, or to spin them into other stories.
Or maybe I will open the box, to add more of my own story to it – more of the story of the place that is now MY home.
But I think not.
When I cleared the house of Clive's unbelievable clutter, I consciously put things I felt to be important but didn't have the strength to deal with at the time into boxes that I labelled "not now". Most of that stuff has been dealt with – and how & where may be the subject for another ramble on the web of dispersal, the putting back of things into circulation, where things went – and maybe that story is not just to do with my clearing of this house, but of emptying my parents house, which reminds me I have 'not yet' folders on that score from 2012 that go back up another long line.
Stories upon stories. Lives upon lives. Tied up in objects. Stories that get lost when we throw all this stuff away. I was going to say all this unimportant stuff, but that is wrong, because this stuff IS important. The stories are the lives, lives of people who very clearly loved and struggled and did very much the same kinds of things that we have either done ourselves or can imagine ourselves doing.
I believe in connection. And in this box are threads of connection, that stream out from me sitting here today, back through more than a hundred years. I take a strange and very strong pleasure in that, even if I never do read every single card and letter, even if I never do piece it all together into a formal narrative, I love that because of me and Clive, because of me being here now, I am also part of the 'Bob & Millie' story. Maybe just the epilogue, but even so. Perhaps that would make them smile.
