Everything Must Go 

By Jane Scoggins

Born in Blyth but made in the Royal Navy. Not alone anymore, and teaching me what I didn't learn, or the teachers couldn't teach in school. Better is out there. Time to cut the rope. Be part of a crew. That sounds good to me. Get away from this small boring little town in Northumberland, not far from Blyth, and see the world.

So I put in the work at the gym and got super fit. I ran along the seafront I don't know how many times. In wind and rain, sun and on more than one occasion, sleet. I scraped through on the GCSE requirements and biometric testing and waited for the start date. My God the training was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I thought all that shouting by the sergeant major was only the stuff you saw in films. But no it actually happens. Not as brutal as in the films but still pretty aggressive at times, or so it seemed to me anyhow. Man up, I told myself, but sometimes I found it hard. I didn't think I would miss home quite as much as I did. More than once wondered if I had made the right decision to join up. But as time passed and I settled to the routine and the rigours of training, I developed an inner strength and a determination to see it through. Like the chap on Mastermind would say ‘I’ve started so I'll finish’. I made a few friends and that helped me find my feet. My training was mainly at HMS Raleigh in Cornwall, at the opposite end of the country to my home. Everything about it was different. The weather, the accents, the scenery. The furthest I had ever been from home had been Scarborough. Our summer holidays had usually been spent on the sands at Whitley Bay, about 10 miles away. Time passed and news from home was that Mum had met a nice man she was going out with. I was pleased for her. She had been by herself since Dad passed nearly five years ago. I still don't like to dwell on that time. She was so brave. As a teenager, I didn't cope well with his loss. I wasn't much use to her. Fortunately Mum’s sister Jackie was great and helped us out. I finished my training and went home on a week’s leave to see Mum and meet her man Dave. We were both a bit nervous. But he turned out to be a lovely bloke and very keen on Mum. She was happy, radiant I think the word is, and so I was pleased for her and told her so with a hug. I went back to start my six month deployment in Africa knowing that Mum and Dave would look after each other. My deployment was not a particularly happy time for various reasons and I again started to have doubts about my life ahead in the Navy. Emails from Mum each week with photos of her and Dave enjoying life and each other made me happy and sad at the same time, and I wished I had someone of my own. But I didn’t. When Mum emailed to say that she and Dave had applied for a shared job in Cornwall on a static mobile home and caravan site I assumed it was for the summer season and they would be returning to Northumberland. But no, they got offered the job and it was a permanent post with nice accommodation. Dave was giving up his lorry driving job to take on the management of the campsite. He had a good knowledge of vehicle maintenance and a licence to move and transport large vehicles. Mum had a wealth of knowledge on cleaning over the years. You name it she had had a job cleaning it; offices, schools, old ladies cottages and big posh houses.  Our house was always spotless. She was our Mrs Hinch.  She had worked at the local One-Stop Shop in recent years too, so was a dab hand stacking shelves, checking invoices and manning the post office counter. So her role on the campsite was to be the site housekeeper and supervisor. They were over the moon. I requested leave to go home to see them before they left. Unfortunately with other people requesting leave and then on top of that Covid restrictions, my leave was delayed. It was a long journey home and when I eventually arrived home I discovered that I had just missed Mum and Dave’s departure. I was really disappointed.  They had had to give up the house tenancy on a certain day and their start date had been brought forward. Mum messaged me to say she was sorry and suggested I go and visit anytime I wanted.  Auntie Jackie put me up on her sofa. She opened up her garage and showed me the stuff that Mum had set aside for Jackie to sell for her. She was going to put things online locally to sell and was also going to have a garage sale.

 

She said that Mum had told her to let me look through the stuff to see if there was anything I wanted to keep. I decided to wait until morning when the light was better as there was no electric light in the garage. We had a Chinese takeaway that evening and I phoned Mum. They had arrived and she was full of excitement about the accommodation and the beautiful surroundings.

‘Lovely spacious mobile home son, it's static with a little bit of garden around it. I can see Lavender and Hebe plants. You know how I love my gardening, there’s bird feeders too, and the most beautiful views towards the coast’.

 She paused to take a breath, and I loved to hear the excitement in her Northumberland brogue. She asked me to visit. I could overhear Dave behind her saying

‘Yes man, do come and see us’.

 In the morning I let myself into the garage and surveyed the array of bits and bobs, small bits of furniture and a collection of supermarket cardboard boxes. The furniture didn’t interest me; neither did the boxes full of pots and pans, cutlery, mugs and plates, although I did rescue my old Superman mug. One of the last boxes held a jumble of stuff that had belonged to me. Some bits so old they must have been in the loft. An exercise book from primary school full of my childish spidery writing as I practised the cursive style of joined-up writing. A little poem about a Robin, and a sentence saying ‘When I grow up I want to be a spaceman and fly to the moon with my Dad’.

In the box were a few Corgi and Dinky cars. I picked them out and lined them up on the top of a long box that had once held bananas from a far off country and was now assigned to holding a collection of china birds, dogs and cats wrapped in tissue paper and bubble wrap.

I held each of the cars, the fire engine and the police car individually and allowed childhood memories to flood into my head and swirl around. I remember them so well, and when I had got them. The fire engine had been a present from Dad when the lady down the road had had a fire in her garden shed, and I had been afraid when I had seen the leaping flames and heard the shouts of fear from neighbours. The firemen had soon put the fire out. I had kept worrying about it so Dad had bought me the little fire engine with all the details on it in miniature, and with two firemen sitting in the cab with their yellow helmets.

Dad had said, ‘We will all be safe now son, now we have a fire engine in the

house’ and at 4 years old I had believed him of course. Every one of those little toy vehicles held a happy and significant memory for me. Whilst I was deep in thought and reflecting on the past, auntie Jackie appeared and said.

‘Have you seen anything you fancy keeping then?’

Now that I had discovered the Dinky cars I realised I wanted to do a bit more searching to see if the old Dandy and Beano and football annuals had been kept, or the world globe or the little wooden box I had made and carved in woodwork lessons.

Before I could gather myself to reply auntie Jackie held up a sign she had hand painted in big letters in bright blue paint:

 

EVERYTHING MUST GO

 

‘This is for the garage sale. What do you think?’

I smiled at her in recognition of her efforts, and because she had a little smear of blue paint on the end of her nose.

After taking a last look around the things in the boxes, and then closing them up, I put the little fire engine in my pocket.

 

Copyright Jane Scoggins