Flat Home Flat (Who Do You Go Home To?) / January 27 2007
I’m listening to George Jones sing Life To Go and I am watching through my window a very poignant and depressing piece of theatre that is taking place across the road.
The flat that Bernard called home for twenty years or so is being emptied of his possessions.
Two workmen in overalls – they must be from the local council – are arranging on the pavement various items of dusty, 1930s style furniture and a number of cardboard boxes that probably contain a paltry assortment of what were once Bernard’s little knick-knacks and other personal belongings.
They are being casually stacked there by the side of the road as a kind of empty and unclaimed tribute to an antisocial and private man who never seemed to have any friends, who was apparently long ago abandoned by his relatives. But to me it also represents a modest and momentary validation of Bernard’s isolated and secluded life.
People are unceremoniously passing by the heart-rending edifice in happy ignorance of what it actually is or of what the particular items once were.
I know what it means to me, this unsentimental and motley collection of discounted brown cupboards, shabby chairs and a Formica table-for-one. It means simply this: Bernard.
In an hour or so, I suppose, the stuff will be loaded on to the wagon that is parked there and driven unsympathetically to the dump. And that will be that. The flat will be cleaned and soon enough Audrey and I will have new neighbours living in flat number 28a.
I couldn’t say I was a real friend to Bernard, but I did always try to say hello to him and to ask after his health. He seemed a complicated man, sometimes bluff and amenable, other times vulgar and abrasive. He often told me things in passing that I found rather startling or often simply quite puzzling. (See previous posts.)
I would bump into him returning from the shops of a morning or from the Royal Oak in the afternoon and he would offer me completely unsolicited - and at times bizarre and wholly idiosyncratic - nuggets of advice on various subjects. I once mentioned to him my car accident. It happened about seven years ago. It was my fault and people were badly injured. I had a mental breakdown at the time and my life fell apart. On hearing this one day, Bernard told me: ‘Don’t you worry, young man, you have your whole life ahead of you, and the sooner you go wrong, the more time you have to get it right.’
Wise words indeed.
Bernard Jones, ? – 2007, the Knickerbocker Glory Boy, R.I.P.
Filed under Family / Life / Loneliness / Other People
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