WHEN WALKING

Today the records went . The Beatles albums my brother bought me every birthday and Christmas, the vinyl legacy of my Bob Dylan years, Britpop CDs from the last decade I was current. My sister’s, Adam and the Ants. My brother’s ELO. There’s none of his Queen in there. They must have been too precious to come to me. Gene Pitney Today, that stayed. I think it’s already found the best home it can have.

There were a few others held back. Not the best, but ones that couldn’t be replaced. Junior Hits played since before I could lift the wooden lid of the family record player; Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, acted out every Saturday by me and Debra St John in the backroom at Brassey Avenue and sung in the car every trip up north (“such a shame that you know all the words but your brother can actually sing”); Astrud Gilberto, the record I heard in the record shop on my first weekend at university and knew immediately that owning it would make me cool (it did not). “That would have sold the moment I played it in the shop”, Mark tells me. I tell him “I know”. And finally, the record that goes in the Sexy Hammond album sleeve has been on my mantelpiece for the last 25 years: found at last.

Mark from the local record shop felt like the right person to take them all. I like the fact he had my brother’s name, and that he took his kids out of school for six months and drove around Europe and Morocco. I like the fact that all the time I have been here he has been just up the road. It is almost as if the records are just moving rooms.

It is the saying goodbye that is the hardest thing. My mother never wanted gifts for birthdays or Christmas. She saw it as “stuff incoming” that would tie her down. I understand her now. An object easily given is not easily removed. It is stamped with a memory and an emotion and you are gifted with the painful task of having to one day let it go, and god help you if the gift outlives the giver. But today I thought, this way I am here to send the “stuff” on with love.

It was a service of remembrance. Sitting on the sofa, talking about the albums, he looked at them and valued them kindly. “So, these ones are worth nothing?” I asked, looking at the pile left in the box. “Oh no, they’re not worth nothing. It’s just that no one will buy them. They can go to a charity shop. One day they’ll find a home”. So, I helped him take the records down to his car. We packed them in safely and Mark drove away. I remembered not to wave. I did not cry. It was a good goodbye.