Poor Mr Price

Many people think it's a depressing job clearing people’s belongings when they die, but Wills have to be proved and relatives want their inheritance. Life goes on.

It’s hard and often dirty work emptying a lifetime’s possessions from a home and not many relatives want to do it. Mum reckoned it was an invasion of privacy, but I didn’t see it that way, because what can be more private than death? Although I have to confess I felt decidedly uncomfortable the first time I went into a home and had to decide what was rubbish and what I could sell for profit. But I soon learned to be businesslike, although it always upset me when I came across old photograph albums that had been left behind. All those faded faces; loved ones from the past, forgotten and discarded. It seemed heartless to dump them, so I used to take them home.

There were places where I found myself looking over my shoulder. The house would have an uncomfortable atmosphere and more often than not I would discover from neighbours that the owner had been unhappy, or unloved, or was sadly just not a very nice person.

Thankfully, most of the homes felt empty and peaceful and I’d quickly begin to get the feel of the man or woman who’d lived there. A sideboard drawer crammed with cast aside bits and pieces can tell you a lot about a person. While I emptied cupboards and sorted I would come across their hobbies and interests, so I suppose mum was right about privacy in a way.

Then one day the phone rang. It was a son needing his father’s house cleared.
The tiny brick terrace was dingy and neglected. Inside there were a few bits and pieces of china and glass, half a dozen bits of furniture and some odd and ends upstairs. Not much that was saleable, but just enough to make a small profit.
Looking sleek and prosperous, Mr Price nodded at the price I offered and I wondered how many more quotes he’d obtained before mine.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I want it cleared tomorrow morning. I’ll be here to let you in.’ It was a bit sudden, but the customer is always right.

When I arrived the next day there were half a dozen expensive cars parked outside the house. A middle-aged woman elegantly dressed in black opened the front door. Mr. Price hovered behind her. ‘We’re in the living room having a cup of tea to warm us up before we go to the cemetery. You can start upstairs,’ he said
That was a first. They hadn’t even buried the poor soul yet!

As I made my way up the steep, narrow stairs carrying two boxes and a roll of black sacks, a middle-aged man carrying a heavy cardboard box was coming from a bedroom.
‘Ah --- yes, I'm just taking the few little things that were promised to me by uncle,’ he stuttered.
I reached the landing and peeked over his shoulder. The bedroom was empty of the few saleable bits and pieces that meant the difference between profit and loss.
Shielding the contents of the cardboard box, he brushed past and made his way downstairs.
Luckily I hadn’t paid Mr. Price yet.

We stood in the dark, narrow hallway, where the scent of expensive aftershave fought a losing battle against the overpowering smell of poverty and neglected old age, and I wished I was a hundred miles away.
‘We agreed on a price for the contents yesterday, but the family is still taking items from the house,’ I said.
Mr. Price frowned. ‘It is usual for relatives to take a little memento in remembrance.’
‘But that’s before you get quotes, not after. The council charges to put un-saleable goods on the tip. You’ll have to pay me if there‘s nothing left to cover my expenses.’ I looked at his smug face and felt my patience snap. ‘Look – this really isn’t the time. We don’t usually clear houses on the day of the funeral. I’ll come back when everyone has finished taking what they want,' adding under my breath, 'in your dreams.'

I had just turned ready to leave, when raised voices erupted from the living room.
‘I tell you he promised these bits to me!’
‘I've got more right to them than you have,’ someone replied.
‘Oh yes, and when was the last time you saw him?’ Another shrill voice joined in.
There was the sound of a tussle, and the tinkle of broken china.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’

Just then the doorbell rang. Because I was nearest I opened the door.
Parked in the middle of the road was a hearse and on the doorstep a funeral attendant with a suitably sorrowful expression on his face began to lift his top hat. But before he could open his mouth to speak, more shouting echoed down the passageway.
‘I’m not with them,’ I blurted and like an idiot, found myself opening my hands and patting my pockets to show I wasn’t leaving with a little something to remember Mr Price by.
The attendant shrugged, lifted his eyes heavenwards and walked slowly back to the hearse. He’d evidently seen it all before.

As I opened the garden gate, something jutting out from under the lid of the dustbin caught my eye. It was an old photograph album and I wondered how many pictures of poor old Mr Price it contained….So I took it.























.



























































































.

Shovels full of Goodness.

Our Street

There are nearly two hundred two up two down terraced houses in our street; every house has a small front garden, and nearly all of the gardens have a rickety wooden seat built for two by the front door.
On warm summer evenings the residents sit outside gossiping with their neighbours, whilst keeping an eye on all the comings and goings in the street.
‘It ‘ent fair,’ my friends moan, ‘you can’t get away with nothing round here, there’s always some old nosy parker watching us and shouting they’ll tell our mum and dad.’

On Sunday afternoons while we laze in front of the fire digesting our dinner and listen to comedy programmes on the radio we wait for the sound of a hand bell being rung outside in the street.
As it begins to clang, Mum fetches a pudding basin and hurries out to a tiny old man wearing a padded flat cap and with a large tray balanced on his head.
The tray has straps and when he lifts it down, the straps stay around his neck making him look like a cinema usherette, but instead of ice cream the tray holds winkles.
A pint basin-full costs sixpence. Dad loves them. He uses a pin to pull the insides out then waves them at us. He says they’re delicious but we pull faces and scream as he pops them in his mouth with relish.
In the summer the winkle man sells muffins instead, but we never buy them. Mum says they’re not very different to bread, so it wouldn’t be a treat.

The ice cream man has a bicycle with a box on the front. The ice cream is stored in dry ice to keep it cold.
He rings his bicycle bell and shouts as loud as he can and is mobbed when it’s hot. Mum always has a first lick of ours just to make sure the ice cream is ok and hasn’t been touched by the dry ice it's stored in, which makes it taste funny. At least that’s her excuse and we don’t mind, because she can’t afford to buy one for each of us.

Sometimes a rag and bone man calls in the street with his horse and cart. One year he gave out baby ducks in exchange for rags. Mum felt so sorry for them she took out a big pile of clothes, and he gave her six in return.
She and Gran put them in a box by the range to keep them warm and tried to feed them, but they died.
Sometimes he gave out baby chicks and one year mum swopped for four. She said we’d fatten them up and have them for Christmas dinner.
Dad licked his lips and said they would taste better than the scraggy things the corner shop sold every year and was looking forward to as much chicken as he could eat.
Gran said she’d learned how to wring chickens necks while she was in service and every year at Christmas she pulls the insides out and plucks the feathers so we thought we had it all planned, but when it was time to kill our chickens she couldn’t bring herself to do it, because she’d been feeding them all year and they liked her. Luckily Mr Rumble from across the road offered to do it, and mum said he could have one for taking the trouble.
When he went down the garden we pulled the curtains and turned the radio up as loud as it would go then shut our eyes and put our fingers in our ears.
When he came in dangling our dead chickens by their feet we all cried - even Gran, so Mum said he could have them all, and we had one from the corner shop as usual for Christmas dinner.

While Mr Turner the greengrocer weighs out vegetables from the back of his cream coloured farm cart, his scruffy piebald horse eats from a bag of oats pulled tightly over its face, and usually leaves a nice pile of manure on the road.
It’s dangerous to go too near the horses hooves and cart wheels and we get shouted at if we forget, but no-one shouts at Mr Goldstein when he darts around the back of the horse and happily scoops up the steaming heap.
He is a Jewish Russian emigrant and has lived in our street for many years. He and his wife are both short and thin and move very quickly. Mrs Goldstein has pierced ears and wears the heaviest gold earrings I’ve ever seen. Every time I look at them I promise myself I’ll have my ears pierced and wear earrings exactly the same when I grow up.
The shovelfuls of goodness Mr Goldstein regularly scoops up are lovingly heaped around two large rose bushes growing in his front garden. Each month the pile beneath the roses grows steadily higher, and on hot summer days the smell overpowers the perfume that wafts from the large pink and yellow blooms. We hurry past their house pinching our noses, and can’t understand how he and his wife can bear to sit out in their front garden, but have to admit no one else in the street has leaves so large and glossy, or blooms as big and showy as Mr Goldstein’s.

During the war, two big dustbins were put in our street for leftover cooked and raw food. The scraps would help feed pigs, which in turn would help the war effort.
Although the war has been over for a few years, the bins are still there and now the scraps are collected by Charlie Martin for his pigs.
Charlie drives a pony and a home made cart styled after a Roman chariot. His heavily Brylcreamed, black hair is brushed straight back and his face and hands are a deep golden brown from being outside all the time. He always wears a clean shirt, but holds his grey flannel trousers up with a tie or a piece of rope, and we’ve never seen him in anything but turned down Wellington boots.
Every couple of days he drives into our street at a fast trot and empties the bins. Although Charlie is friendly and waves to us we don’t hang around him because the bins and his cart smell even in the cold weather.
The pigs are kept on a large allotment near the Recreation grounds. When we’re playing on the swings we can hear the pigs squealing impatiently as he boils up the food that’s come from our bins.

The Co-op bread man has a huge black horse called Nobby. Nobby is mum's favourite. He won’t wait for the bread man to finish delivering to the other customers at the end of the street. He ignores his driver’s shouts to wait and walks down to our house, steps onto the pavement and stands our tiny front garden resting his nose on our front door until mum opens it. Then they both wait for the sweating bread man to catch him up. Mum always pulls a bit of bread from the end of the bloomer loaf she’s just bought and feeds it to Nobby. She only buys the Co-ops bread because of the horse.

Sometimes a flock of ducks and geese are moved to a stretch of river that runs just behind our street.
For a few moments everything comes to a standstill as they are driven along. They look so fierce I stand behind our front gate as they rocket along in a blur of movement and sound. With feet flopping and slapping on the hard road they stretch their necks skywards and indignantly honk and hiss. They leave a silent swirl of downy feathers in the gutters when they have passed.

We have a local factory that makes galvanized milking stalls. For a few minutes four times a day, our quiet street gets very busy as the workers who live locally and walk or bike to work hurry to and from the factory.
Even indoors I can hear their chatter and their steel tipped heels briskly hitting the pavement. There is always someone whistling and the smell of oil that seeps into their clothes during the day lingers in the air for ages after they’ve passed.
The factory bosses drive cars. When we’re playing outside one of us keeps lookout and shouts, ‘car coming!’ Then we have to stop playing marbles in the gutters or skipping games across the road and wait on the pavement until they have passed.

Simmonds Brewery is just around the corner. The beer is brewed in huge copper vats in whitewashed basement rooms. Further along in another basement room artists touch up or paint new pub signs. They work with their easels facing the window and we always try to guess the name of the pub when we kneel down on the pavement, and peer through the barred windows.
The brewery is on both sides of the street. The smell of malt and hops is overpowering and it’s extremely noisy with the sound of banging as the Coopers make and repair oak beer barrels. Workers whistle and shout cheerily to each other as they load and unload lorries and in the background beer bottles being washed rattle and clank and are then re-filled as they speed along the conveyor belts.
Across the road from the bottling section are the stables for two pairs of shire horses. They deliver the brewery’s beer to most of the pubs in our area. Their hooves strike sparks against the cobbled yard as they strain to pull the heavily laden wagons through high, iron gates, while the driver, who wears a bowler hat, a brown belted raincoat and drapes a tartan blanket over his knees in cold weather, sits high on the front of the wagon as they begin their days work.

Television made the rickety wooden seats redundant. Houses have been pulled down and cars park nose to bumper in the narrow streets where we used to play.
The Brewery was taken over and moved to the edge of town and now blocks of flats stand where men and women once made milking pens - but something has survived.

Their driver in his smart bowler hat flicks the reins and talks gently as the descendants of my childhood Shires, beribboned, groomed to perfection and as powerful as ever, pull a smart Simmonds cart full of oak barrels in front of admiring crowds at County Shows all around the country.