Because we are elderly, we were watching yet another episode of the interminable and increasingly mad series that is Midsomer Murders. A particularly loopy story-line involved a dodgy antique dealer and some “netsuke”.
“What are netsuke?” asked Greg. “I’ve got some,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
I went into the third-best bedroom and opened the lid of my nice great-grandmother’s battered oak chest, which contained the horrors.
“Aren’t they ugly?” said Greg. “Hideous,” I said. The hideous things were given to me by my horrible grandma. She was given to giving horribleness.
I hadn’t opened great-grandma’s chest for years. When I lifted the lid, out wafted the scent of mothballs, and memories. Her name was Agnes. She was born in the late 1880s. She died when I was 14. She knitted me bed-socks.
She saved her scant pennies to buy me and my brother jelly babies from the corner dairy. She made her Christmas cakes in June and stored them in the oak box until Christmas. They tasted of mothballs. They were inedible. We pretended they were delicious.
We were a family who lived out of boxes and chests. We were always moving. This, in the 1970s, involved packing up your lives into tea chests. They still smelled like a morning cuppa.
I hated moving. Kids do. They don’t see a move as an opportunity for making a new start. They see a move as leaving their lives behind. I hated leaving my friends behind and having to go to a new school and having to make new friends. I went to 10 different schools.
I should have a box phobia. But, weirdly, I love boxes. I completely understand the compulsion cats have to crawl into a box. You can hide all manner of things in boxes. Special things, such as kittens. Or secrets. As a teenager, I had a secret box in which I stored “writings”, now thankfully long lost.
I have a collection of boxes. One is a little black enamelled box inlaid on its lid with a boy playing a flute on a water buffalo. I have had it for 40-odd years, a present from my friend Deb.
Another, an elegant, amber and black lacquered box, was given to me by a former neighbour in Auckland. She had been a curator of such treasures at a museum in South Korea before moving to New Zealand.
I also have a vast array of wonderful painted boxes, some stripped, some spotted, some with eyes and others with strange plants. They have been made, and gifted, by that endlessly inventive artist Gavin Chilcott.
In the third-best bedroom, on top of Agnes’s oak chest, is a stack of the Chilcott boxes and atop these is a dear little round papier mâché box that depicts three mad-looking maharajahs riding on an insane-looking elephant. It was, I think, a 30th birthday present from my old mate Cath.
I love them all.
When former petrolhead-turned-pretend-farmer Jeremy Clarkson manages to achieve anything on his farm without completely cocking it up, he crows, “I’ve done a thing!”
I have never done a thing. I have never had any desire to do a thing. Due to my inherent laziness, I am happiest when not doing a damn thing.
A thing happened: a tree blew over and fell into the Long Paddock. Greg was cutting it up with his chainsaw. I was helping by watching. In other words, I wasn’t doing a damn thing.
I wandered off to look at the sheep. I heard a pinging noise. A baton had broken and was leaning on the electric fence. You don’t want a pinging electric fence. It could spark and set fire to things.
I decided I had, perhaps, to do something. I had no idea what thing to do. I found a big stick and bashed the fence. It stopped pinging. I crowed, “I’ve done a thing!”
You have to admit that, at the age of 60, to do a thing for the first time ever is quite something.
