Anthea Turner How I See It...

Hello,

This week I’m writing to you from a small town in Italy, just outside Milan. From my window the sky is stunning blue, the mountains are glistening, I can smell log fires burning, nothing could look better. However, we are here not for happy reasons. My fiancé’s mother, who lived here, passed away just before Christmas, and we are painstakingly going through her home and making those awful decisions on what to keep and what to let go of.

She was 88 and I feel like I have been on an all-consuming course on the life of a woman who has indirectly made me so happy. But Emilia was from a generation who threw nothing away – and I mean nothing.

From her grandmother’s trousseau, painstakingly monogrammed, to her own, carefully preserved in all its beauty. Every utterance, letter, gift tag, note, postcard, invitation and photographs running into the thousands (some of which we can identify, many we can’t).

I wasn’t in her life for long enough to give her my “If it’s not beautiful, useful or seriously sentimental get rid of it” line, although the latter category we would have struggled with, going by the eclectic objets d’art she had collected!

The reason for sharing a little of this story with you is because, with ever y challenge we face, we learn or have a little think or tweak our own life and grow – yes, even at our age!

WHAT’S MY LEGACY?

I will leave Italy on this particular trip considering my own position as chief operating officer and curator of my life. So when sorting through stuff, deciding what to keep, my question will be, does it add value to the picture of my life, or does it clutter it up and give those left behind a headache? Obviously, my collection of crazy iconic fashion worn by me from the ’70s in TopOf ThePops and many other shows I’ve been involved in, is sacrosanct. Also, just so you know, as much as I bang on about clearing out things, it’s actually because I am constantly fighting the little hoarder inside me! I’m no Marie Kondo – who could live like that? But do my kids want faded faxes, a stack of old GMTV scripts, and a signed poster of the band who played at our school dance then disbanded a month later, never to be heard of again? I think not…