Bin bags

I went for a very lovely walk on the heath this evening. Some sort of weather front is rolling in, to take all the glorious sunshine away, and a fresh wind was blowing fairly keenly. The trees were roaring appreciatively, saying “look how beautiful our leaves look in this glorious breeze.”

Nathan and I have been throwing stuff away today in preparation for our big move. We’ve filled bin liners with clothes which we’re never going to wear again, each with its own set of very particular memories. Punting trips, sunset walks, picnics, laughter. The jacket pockets are stuffed full of theatre tickets, back stage passes, mucky extra strong mints, grains of sands and impossibly large bits of fluff! I found the jacket which I’d last worn as I walked the length of the River Nene. I was moved to see that I’d worn an AIDS ribbon throughout, a full six months before Nathan became HIV positive.

Of course, cleaning out ones belongings is a deeply therapeutic thing to do. There are hugely positive benefits: you feel lighter and more able to tackle the world. But every little object which has stayed with you for any length of time can also generate a “what if?” 

We very nearly didn’t move to Highgate in the first place. I was working as a casting agent with Shaheen Baig in the flat below and when the landlord first approached her to ask if she knew anyone who might like the flat upstairs, I immediately said no. 

The journey to our accepting the flat is a story in itself. Nathan and I were living in Tufnell Park in a lovely little flat with a hugely eccentric lay out. It was situated over three floors. Our kitchen was on a half landing, so people living in flats above would traipse past us whilst we were cooking or cleaning our teeth! The bathroom was even more bizarre. It was on the ground floor - right next to the back door - so to go to the loo or have a bath, we had to go down two flights of communal stairs. It was a nightmare in the night, and we’d sometimes bump into our neighbours wearing nothing but a towel.

Anyway, we only had a bath and a loo in the bathroom. We washed our hands in the bath because there was no sink. It was, however, a fine, enamel-covered, really deep bath. One of my great joys in life was lying in it on a summer’s evening with the window to the back garden wide open and the cooling air tickling my face.

Nathan was always more of a shower man, and one day asked the land lady if we might have a little shower unit fixed above the bath. She was curiously obliging and immediately said that she didn’t see why not.

My friend Tammy was staying with us at the time, and we came home one day, horrified to find my precious bath, in pieces, dumped in the front garden. We went into the bathroom to discover that a horrible shower unit, built from flimsy plastic and chipboard had replaced it. I hate having showers, so our exit from the flat was almost immediately assured. To make matters worse, the landlady hadn’t thought to give us a sink. It was one thing washing our hands in the bath after using the loo, but quite something else having to turn the shower on, risking getting absolutely soaked if the shower head hadn’t been pressed against the cubical wall.

It was a nightmare. I immediately went back to Shaheen’s landlord, and asked if his flat was still available. Astonishingly, it was. It was at least a month since I’d turned it down. In those days (2005) it was really easy to find flats to rent. Everyone was buying, because houses were much cheaper.

So that’s the story of our little flat in Archway Road, and the biggest “what if” of all is wondering what might have happened to me, to us, had we stayed in Tufnell Park. The flat we’d lived in there came up for rent again at the start of the year and I made an enquiry. The three self-contained rooms we used to have as two bedrooms and a sitting room, had been turned into a one-bedroom flat, with a bathroom and kitchen crammed into the old living room. I was staggered to discover that it was on the market for just under three times the amount we’d paid for it when it had twice the number of bedrooms! London is a very different place 15 years on...

I suspect I shall be feeling increasingly nostalgic as we get closer and closer to the move date.