MY DAUGHTER’S MOVING ON
My daughter is moving out of the tiny one-bedroom flat she shares with her boyfriend, into somewhere they can breathe out in.
Now, on the one hand, this move is great news. On the other hand, it involves packing – and not just packing for a few days in Majorca.
When I was a little girl, my dad was in the army and we moved from one army house to another. Weirdly, even when these houses were in different countries, they looked pretty similar, and all our furniture was bog-standard army regulation.
This meant that when you left your property, you were ‘counted out’, which involved every item of furniture supplied by the military when you moved into the house (including teaspoons), being checked and counted and anything damaged or missing when you moved out, having to be paid for.
I have to say, if a teaspoon went missing in my daughter’s flat, the chances of finding it would be pretty slim. The flat is bulging at the seams with stuff – and muggins here spent an afternoon on clothes duty. This involved Phoebe heaping every garment she possessed onto the bed and the two of us making ruthless decisions. This occasionally got dangerous.
Me: ‘It’s never suited you and the fabric is cheap.’
Phoebe: ‘You bought it for me.’ Countless bags of charity shop cast-offs later, we were left with the good stuff, including some pieces that I originally wore in the Nineties, when I had both a figure and some money. Jean Paul Gaultier bodystocking dress, anyone? Some black leather Jigsaw shorts?
There was also a great deal of Topshop clobber and the two of us got misty-eyed about shopping trips of old. It’s still a shock to realise those Oxford Street escalators will never again take us down into that vast basement of fashion.
Packing up anyone’s wardrobe is a trip back to the past, and for Phoebe, now in her 30s, it was time to decide whether or not to keep the 20-something rave gear. Yes, to the metallic mermaid leggings, no to the DayGlo mini.
So much of your life is wrapped up in what you were wearing on certain days – and what might look like jumble to a stranger is actually a whole heap of precious memories, some happy, some sad, some plain forgettable and mostly acrylic.
‘The two of us had to make ruthless decisions’