No room for the shiftless here

Life, somebody said, though I cannot remember who, even though I respect his/her wisdom, is mainly involved with ‘shifting’ things; moving items or substances from one place to another.

This applies in virtually every case you can think of. Our work, our travel, and making a move are the obvious ones. Less obvious, but equally valid are food consumption, digestion and excretion – if it goes in, it has to come out, and after it comes out it has to be expedited elsewhere to be disposed of. Yes, our shit must be shifted. Even making love, from intercourse to consummation, to giving birth is essentially about shifting items or substances. OK, graphic enough? But, come to think of it, we even refer to lazy people as being 'shiftless', as in not doing their rightful share of shifting.

Anyway, our weekend was involved with shifting. Shifting Wendy from Victoria to back here full-time (yay!), but also shifting a lot of stuff from Victoria to here. Even though we’d hired a moving van, we also hauled masses of things up in both our cars, which were filled to the gunwhales, or whatever equivalent cars have.

And then, once we got the Victoria stuff here, we also had to shift some stuff that was already in place in our primary residence. Fortunately, I have a dear friend whose soul I utterly love – the physical aspects of her are pretty cute, too – who is opening a half-way house for recovering addicts and was seeking furniture to deck her place out. Great for her and greet for us. We could shift some stuff 'out' to her, and we could then shift 'in' some of the stuff that’s coming here in the next day or so.

Her taking the stuff brings me to the second aspect of this thesis – the human propensity to hang on to stuff rather than shift it. You’ve all read those stories of elderly hermits who are found dead in some fleabag apartment literally buried in stuff, old newspapers and some such. The point is, if we don’t let things go, such could happen to any of us. We acquire things, use them, and then quite oddly really, grow sentimentally attached to them. They have associations and memories.

I had to deal this when I was giving my things over to my friend.

“Are you sure you won’t miss the table?” Wendy asked me. The table to which she was referring was a teakwood table that we used as our kitchen table. We ate many a meal at it. My second wife, stepdaughter and I ate many a meal at it. For my first wife and I, it was our first piece of decent dining furniture and we got it in 1975. Christ, that’s 33 years.

So, in answer to Wendy’s question, “Yes, I will miss it, in a weird way.”

But, it is to be replaced by a spiffy new table and chairs we had in the Victoria apartment. They will be better. Furthermore, we had literally no place to put the old table. It would have ended up in the garage as a storage platform for paint tins, or something equally undignified. Now it can serve as a place for a group of recovering junkies to have a coffee, chat and wrestle with their respective demons. A much better purpose.

The other item was the old, second-bedroom queen size bed. It was the nuptial bed for wife #1 and I and aside from serving for sleeping, it was also host to all sorts of other shenanigans. That’s a pretty cool history over many years. But, the thing is, in Victoria we had a wonderful king-size that is shortly to arrive here. In the master bedroom we had a beautiful brass bedstead queen size, so the crummy (albeit sometimes very naughty) bed lost in the draw, and it will also go to the recovering junkies. May they rest blissfully and drug free.

The final one was a perfectly decent chest-of-drawers. That one was easy. Neither of us liked it.

Hopefully the shifting will be over in the next couple of days, and then I can weep quietly for my old table and bed.