Spring fever can lead to strange purchases T

HISTORY seems to be repeating itself.

Soon, we’ll have to pay a deposit on drink bottles and cans in an attempt to boost recycling and reduce waste and pollution.

Those of us of a certain age will remember when all pop and beer bottles came with a deposit. Kids would be given the empties by their parents and return them to get thruppence apiece from the shopkeeper for sweets.

The danger of the old system was that enterprising (or less scrupulous) youngsters would nip round the back of the shop where the empties were kept, grab three or four and go back in the front door to claim the deposit afresh.

This time round, it appears, the system will be much safer and we will be dropping them into cash-back recycling machines.

Another news item was about the outrage caused at an infant’s school where children wanting to go to the loo had to put their hand up to ask for toilet paper. It was causing embarrassment and tears.

This again is not new and happened at my primary school a lifetime ago, when I recall putting up my hand and Miss Clarke handing me only one sheet of shiny toilet paper with the words: “You only have a little bum”.

Imagine the ignominy of being a child on the larger size and getting more. The memory lives with me still. HE start of British Summer Time made me consider a spring clean.

Not the sort where you hang huge rugs over washing lines and beat the daylights out of them with implements more suited to the Spanish Inquisition.

More a re-assessment of the clutter of life in an age where we acquire possessions like never before.

I mean, when I was a lad you had a best suit for Sunday and special occasions, and the rest of a minimalist wardrobe was for weekdays. Now you can’t go for a stroll around town without tripping over a bargain in TK Maxx.

Fired by good intentions, I started going through my wardrobe and wondered where common sense had been when I acquired six waistcoats on eBay last year. Six waistcoats. Did I think I was going to start a whole new fashion trend of layered waistcoats, one on top of the other until I looked like the Michelin Tyre Man but with thin arms? This was not an isolated incident. Three years ago, I discovered the ‘gilet’ was a handy spring and summer garment because it was sleeveless and had many pockets.

Get thee behind me eBay. I bought six of those as well. All bargains. And all unworn after I noticed they were already a fashion trend among elderly gentlemen and my internal calender said I was only 32. The gilets went.

There was surprisingly little to discard. Anything extraneous I hand on to my sons-in-law, which proves that either I still have an eye for style or they don’t care.

Onto books, but I had already pruned my library two years ago at my wife’s insistence.

“Can we get rid of the books in the bedroom?”

“Not really. The living room, corridor, guest suite, my office and the loft conversion are already full.”

Maria did not find the argument acceptable and the Hospice Shop was the beneficiary and we had a lot more room to walk around in. I am now down to the bare bones of 800 volumes. It was a similar story with music. My LP collection of 2,000 vinyl albums had been handed on to my daughter and son-in-law in Donegal and what was left was a sparse 1,000 CDs and they don’t take up much room.

I could transfer them all onto digital but the sleeve notes are street maps of the past. Pick one up and you start remembering when.

“The Righteous Brothers,” Maria said, wistfully.

They were performing on Ready Steady Go when I called at her house to pick her up on our first date in 1964. Odd how You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling remains “our song” after 50 years of marriage.

So the outcome of my spring clean is four waistcoats.

But I’m keeping two, just in case.

I started going through my wardrobe and wondered where common sense had been