It was a few days after my mum had passed away, she passed away on May 13th, 2019, and to try to take our minds off her passing my brother Graham and I decided to do some cleaning and gardening around my mum’s home, but before getting stuck into hoovering carpets and pulling weeds out of lawns and flower borders we had to clear out and dismantle the garden shed which had all but fallen down around itself. When my father was alive he used to maintain the shed by painting it occasionally with wood preserve and fixing any splits or roof leaks that happened to appear with bitumen, but since his passing it had been neglected and as a result it had pretty much collapsed in on itself. The shed had been up in our garden for more than 35 years, mostly housing gardening implements and various household items that had been relegated there due to breaking down or because they were no longer used; also there were one or two motorcycle and scooter parts that I’d placed in there over the years, as well as some old clothes and school books.
The first step was to clear out all these items, but before we could do this we had to get into the shed which turned out to be more of a challenge than we had expected. To begin with, opening the shed door was quite an undertaking as the hinge at the top of the door had come away from the door frame and as the shed had more or less collapsed in on itself from the inside it just would not open. Finally, after a fairly well thought out pulling and tugging strategy we were able to open the door enough to put a crowbar in and then prize it open. Once into the shed, we quickly got to work emptying it of its contents, some of which we placed in a pile ready to throw away and the things that were still worth keeping we decided to put into the garage. Emptying out that shed brought back quite a few memories for both Graham and I: Graham found one or two of his old school books, there were some bags of my father’s clothes, which although damp and unwearable, we couldn’t throw away and there was also a weight lifting bench and some weights which I can remember buying and using as a teenager to try to beef myself up a bit. Once all the contents were out of the shed we armed ourselves with hammers, crowbars and various other tools and set about dismantling it. Taking the roof off was the most challenging part of the job, but once that was off the sides came down very quickly and as the floor had all but rotted away that was easy to take up. We laid all the wooden panels down on top of each other as best as we could ready for the local council to come and collect them and take them to the local refuse tip; however, unfortunately, we could not schedule for the local council to pick up the dismantled shed during the time we had remaining, so we decided to leave it until the next time either Graham or myself visited the UK.
With the shed dismantled and in a pile, some of its contents in the garage and other bits and pieces next to it ready for taking away to the refuse tip, we then turned our attention back to the hoovering and the gardening. I opted to stay outside and tackle the garden and Graham was more than happy to put his energy into the hoovering, scrubbing of floors and dusting, so with me outside and Graham indoors the cleanup work began. I’ve always enjoyed getting out into the garden, but this time mum was not there to look out the window at my progress and bring me out the occasional cups of hot tea, pieces of homemade cake and plates of biscuits that she had often brought out to me in the past. As Graham and I stopped living with mum some years back she hired a gardening company, actually Graham hired the company, to visit her home periodically to cut the lawn, so that was not too overgrown. However, as the gardening company is not contracted to do anything more than mow the lawn the weeds in the lawn had thrived beyond comprehension, it wasn’t just the weeds in the lawn that could have won prizes for their health, strength and vigor, if there was such a thing as a weed show and such categories existed, but also the weeds in the flower borders and between the garden path flags looked like they were ready to put up a good fight. I looked at my tasks ahead and then turned around to look at the living room window that looks out onto the back garden in the hope that I would have my mum’s face looking out at me, as it always did when I lived at home, but of course that wasn’t to be. It was then that it properly hit home that my mum was no longer with us, but her memory was and still is, as is my father’s. I will be back to you next week with part 2 of this story : ‘Crouch, kneel, ouch!’, so until then, keep safe and healthy.