The John Griff Column: The times they are a-changing…

The change – or changes - I refer to have been quite personal for those encountering them. For me this week they have been quite fundamental too. A week ago, I took the plunge and finally got myself a new pair of glasses, frames and all. Previously, I had been content to have just my lenses renewed and put into the same frames, but this time I decided to change everything. I’m happy with the results, albeit that in a certain light I possibly look a little like Brains from Thunderbirds. It’s the new lenses though. Apparently, as I age, my vision is ‘improving’, so I don’t need a prescription which is quite as strong as it used to be. Encouraging as that sounds though (how often does creeping decrepitude herald an improvement in the quality of one’s existence?!), I’m finding it a touch difficult to settle into the new prescription. The opticians say that I have a hundred days to ‘see how things go’ (nice pun, well done), but a week in I am finding myself alternately squinting and then opening my eyes wide to try to make things more readily visible. I will get there, but for now if you pass me on St Giles Street and I look as though I’ve got an almighty tic, it’s just me managing change. That, or heading for the opticians again…

If you are a regular to this column you might recall that 6 months ago, I referenced the passing of my lovely mum, Joy. Looked after by the excellent teams on Collingwood Ward at Northampton General Hospital and previously St Christopher’s Care Home just off Abington Park, mum slipped away peacefully in the early hours of March 1st. St C’s was the only place that mum would countenance moving to from her home in Abington. Before becoming a resident, she had been a volunteer in the little shop there and I had started to make discreet noises that it might be a good place to see out her days when the time finally came to relinquish living independently in a house with fairly steep stairs and a demanding garden. She finally moved there in August last year and almost immediately we put her house on the market in order to help fund her ongoing needs. I will never forget my rising sense of panic as I realised the difficulty of establishing what those needs might be and the costs that she might have to cover for herself, being a homeowner, regardless of her contributions to the state’s coffers in life. There is a litany of horror stories which people like to quote from (even those on the helplines, it seemed) in such times and with a depressed housing market I really worried about bridging the possible time and cost gaps that might have become a reality. In the event, mum departed mere months later, at the age of almost 87.

With mum’s departure the change process continued for me, but on a changed basis. Previously her sole guardian under Power of Attorney, I now became her joint Executor with my cousin, Simon. There followed the process of registering mum’s death, application for Probate (for which it seems impossible to get any kind of state communication of progress) and, in the midst of it all, the ongoing sale of her house.

Tomorrow, if all goes to plan, the completion of that sale will go through. For the past week and a half I have been emptying it, trying to find new homes for some of her belongings and preparing the house for its new owners. Like many and just as with the sale of my own house, I ordered a skip into which I could put all the ‘stuff’ which we as humans amass around ourselves, seemingly unable ever to dispense with. Along with donations to local charities, I contacted a couple of antiques specialists for their advice and to get them to take a look – one of them was straight into the skip almost before she’d got into the house, looking for things that might have a value despite me appraising them as ‘junk’ – she filled a large people carrier before departing again and in the process created a lot more space in the skip. Over the weekend I wasn’t at mum’s house, but on Monday this week I discovered that others had helped themselves to a good rummage. I found it both strange and a little unsettling. Is there really a market for a dust-encrusted video camera from around 1992, without batteries or tapes? Apparently so.

During the clearout, I discovered a variety of items which had belonged to both my mother and father and which I never knew existed. I found a huge number of pictures and keepsakes from as far back as the 18th century, mementoes of a previously unknown age and information about relatives I never knew. Mum had held onto things which are now treasured possessions of mine – and they all have stories to tell. The house though is now empty – and the ghosts have gathered. Some items I’ve not been able to rehome or dispose of, but the incoming owners have said they’ll take anything I want to leave, which helps. A sizeable cleaning operation took place a couple of days ago although I’m sure the new custodians will want to rip out and redecorate to make the place their own – I certainly would. I hope they enjoy their new surroundings.

I’ve tried not to think too much about it, but with the sale of the house there is now the closing of a huge chapter in my family’s story. Dad was born and brought up on Kingsley Road, I started my life in Hazelwood Road and mum saw out her days just off Rushmere Road. Death, taxes and change. And so the circle continues.