On the upside, I found the Kenwood ice cream maker

[kaberett]

On the downside, however, it was purchased in 2002 -- the Woolworths receipt stapled to the distractions advertises the release of The Two Towers -- and is its own standalone device, i.e. very much not the attachment my mother remembers Mama using while she was an undergraduate.

Which -- given the nature of the house -- means there's at least one more ice cream maker somewhere, in addition to today's finds of yet another Kenwood Chef chassis (this one complete with bowl and mixing attachments, hidden behind the stack of disused breadmakers), a coffee grinder, a fourth mincer, and a mysterious thing I know not what.

This is particularly disturbing because I've now gone through as much of the cellar as I'm going to prior to the clearance firm arriving (there is, for example, categorically no way I'm investigating the locked wardrobe that's wedged along a piece of wall behind a wine rack that has been bolted to said wall) and it's... not there. (I was briefly excited by the two potato peelers, previously mentioned, because "a glorified bowl lined with sandpaper and a stirring device similarly coated" has superficial similarities to "a freezable metal bowl and miscellaneous churn", but nope!)

Maybe it's in the freezer that is just getting taken away as-is because No? Maybe it's somewhere under the rafters? Maybe it's in the garage, somewhere, horribile dictu?

Either way, the clearance folk arrive on Thursday morning, and on Thursday morning I will turn into my grandfather: I shall become a wretched little gremlin insisting on poking through every single container they try to remove from the property in the course of the job of work they've been hired to do, in case any of said containers contains something precious.

But then again I did, earlier and at my mother's direction, find on top of the ridiculous wardrobe in the hall, in a nest of dust and spiders and pristine LPs, Papa's commission. And great-grandpa's commission. Signed by the actual respectively relevant kings. Which Papa had sworn blind were Probably In The Attic, and had been keen for us to find, and to be fair the attic would have been A MUCH MORE SENSIBLE PLACE TO PUT THEM but THERE YOU GO, Papa, THERE YOU GO.

Comments

[kaberett]

I have not yet actually visited the grave (with its recently-installed headstone) and Demanded An Explanation, but "PAPA, WHY" is a Frequent Exclamation that Echoes Down The Hall.

[rmc28]

For clear and present cause, by all accounts!

[untonuggan]

wow the stuff you did find sounds so cool. good luck finding the other things.

[kaberett]

so many things, friend. so many. so many.

[radiantfracture]

This is rather thrilling.

[azurelunatic]

Oh, my. Goodness. Gracious.

[madgastronomer]

Post a pic of the Mysterious Thing? Maybe someone will know what.

[kaberett]

I'm pretty sure it's a bit of innards that's been disentangled from its proper context and otherwise generally vivisected, but I shall attempt to get a photograph tomorrow...

[mdlbear]

I'm familiar with that state. After five moves in six years, it's difficult to tell what we got rid of (perhaps by mistake), what was (we think, probably) stolen by one of the many movers we hired, and what is simply "in a box somewhere".

Maybe this has something to do with my stress level? On the other hand maybe it's the financial trainwreck? Or maybe it's retirement? That's supposed to be stressful, too. *sigh*

[kaberett]

Ooof, yeah. I have... certainly got a mental peg in Several Things that I know I put onto a bookshelf when I unpacked in the previous flat, and was mysteriously absent when we came to pack up again. And the like. Which I don't quite bring myself to replace but resent the absence of...

[sylvaine]

It's like a treasure hunt! >>

[kaberett]

PRECISELY

[cesy]

Finding those commissions sounds amazing.

[kaberett]

My mother was delighted! I'm a bit "??? I can see why these were important to the people at the time and I can kind of see why you're excited but personally I really don't... care that much???" so I would be interested to know why you think they're a point of particular interest also!

[cesy]

Because they're a historical legal document signed by a monarch, I think - it feels both a bit archaic and a bit special. Like, at least back then, and to some extent even nowadays, having a commission means you're an officer and that's a Thing, and I imagine they have some fancy crest and maybe a bit of calligraphy and a Seal of Approval or something like that. And a monarch/royal person still feels special to me on some level, despite my varying opinions about the actual ones floating around these days.

I hoped my degree certificate would be like that, and in the end it was printed on cheap paper and didn't feel as special.

I know there's nothing to stop me from buying thick paper from a craft shop and doing calligraphy and heraldry and sealing wax myself, but it has not yet happened. Some day I will make really fancy adulting certificates for my friends.

[rmc28]

Yeah, I kind of get that. Spouse and I got married in a Cambridge College Chapel, and so we had to get a Special Licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which sounds like we're in a period romance but is actually fairly straightforward to obtain. Anyway, it is satisfyingly formal-document with seal and fancy crest and stuff. (And er, in a safe place somewhere in the study? I could not swear to being able to put my hands on it in five minutes, and getting the house to a point where that is more likely is definitely A Goal I Have.)

[fyreharper]

I was quite disappointed at my university diploma being just a printed piece of paper also - having grown up seeing my parents’ hanging on the wall in all their large calligraphed vellum-as-in-sheepskin glory (there’s a story about “and that imperfection there was probably from a bit of barbed wire”)

Though I suppose that would be rather a lot of sheep and people would be displeased about the source.

[fyreharper]

Although it appears Wikipedia is trying to tell me vellum is from calfskin and everything else is parchment. I think.

[davidgillon]

My degree certificate is on decent paper, has a nice printed imitation of calligraphy, and then they typed in or printed my name in Arial. Why!?!

[sebenikela]

This sounds a bit like when my grandparents moved out of the house their six kids all grew up in.

Also a terrifying possible future in which I become responsible for dealing with MY parents' housefull of stuff.

part exciting treasure hunt, part JUST WHY, part EW, part drudgery...good luck!

[kaberett]

HAHAHAHAHA YEAH.

we at least think that most of the Actual Vermin have, at this point, been Seen To...!

[randomling]

Wow. Good luck, that sounds like an... intense experience. <3

[kaberett]

Honestly we've been itching to do it for actual years and possibly even Decades, Papa just wouldn't let us. So it's very cathartic even as it's simultaneously viscerally repellent drudgery...

[randomling]

That sounds... emotionally complicated!

<3

[rainne]

You mentioned the locked wardrobe and I had a vision of that scene in The Addams Family (the movie) where Morticia is going through a wardrobe in the attic and it's Uncle So-and-so's wardrobe and then Uncle So-and-so, in a body bag.

[kaberett]

AHAHAHAHAhaaaaaaahahahaha. Ha. Ha.

(In fact we smuggled my grandmother's remains over the Austrian border lo these several years ago now, so fingers crossed the only remaining dead bodies to find are the result of putting down poison for the vermin.)

[rainne]

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!!!

[booksarelife]

Sorry for being completely off topic, but Jack Benjamin icon!!!! Kings!! Or maybe TJ?

[rainne]

I think it's TJ :)

[booksarelife]

I should have guessed TJ because he actually looks happy in that icon (mostly) and Jack basically never looks actually happy when wearing suits :)

[booksarelife]

Were you smuggling her ashes into or out of Austria and why were smuggling them in the first place?

[kaberett]

Oh goodness this is a long and convoluted story.

So: Mama was an Austrian national, and a language teacher, who came over to work after the war as an au pair to improve her English. She met my grandfather, Papa, at Mass; after a certain degree of to-and-fro-ing she married him and moved to England. However, there's a family plot in the graveyard of the church they were married in over in Austria, and she always said there's nothing worse than an untended grave, so we ended up cremating her and taking her back over to inter her with her mother (and, eventually, Her Brother The Olympian Pentathlete, though he's still going strong).

HOWEVER, she died in the UK. And it's (very crudely) illegal to be in possession of human remains in Austria unless you're a medical professional or a member of the clergy. Which means that you can't fly into Austria carrying human remains, because they'll get taken off you at Customs (because you very much have to declare them when checking in, because there is no way they don't show up in luggage scanners).

So instead we shoved her into my mother's backpack and flew into Switzerland, which is much more relaxed about these things; stayed the night at my uncle's; and took the train over the border the following day. Trains, you see, don't need cargo manifests in the same way as aeroplanes.

The parish priest did not bat an eyelid, and made no enquiries at all whatsoever as to how we'd imported her.

[booksarelife]

That is really cool! The parish priest made me laugh!

[rmc28]

Have I told you the anecdote about how my grandfather's remains were left at the crematorium for TWENTY YEARS?

[kaberett]

... no

[rmc28]

Ok, right, so to set the scene, my maternal grandparents moved from Manchester to a nice bungalow in a seaside town the north Welsh coast when my grandfather retired from being a minister. Sadly, as is often the case with men who stop suddenly after working hard for years, he died of a heart attack about six months later. I was about four at the time and my next sibling was about a year old.

My grandmother lived for nearly another twenty years in this town they'd picked out, moving after a while from the bungalow to a smaller flat, and later again to a single room in an Abbeyfield house. Eventually she died of cancer (a few other things had a go first, but she was stubborn), considerately doing so just after everyone had got home from my aunt's silver wedding celebrations. So, there is a funeral, and my mother and aunt do the clearing out of her room, and mostly manage not to fall out, and agree that they will fix a date to scatter their mother's ashes together. They are both really busy so this takes a month or two, but eventually she rings up the crematorium to arrange collection of Mrs Moffat's ashes.

"And will you also be collecting Mr Moffat's ashes at the same time, madam?" asks the person at the other end.

After a bit of bafflement and conversation, they establish that none of my grandmother, my mother or my aunt remembered to actually collect my grandfather's ashes after his funeral. But it was the same crematorium and they'd kept them safely and their record-keeping was good enough to put the two together, even after twenty years.

[kaberett]

This is stunningly beautiful and I thank you.

[davidgillon]

Your grandparents generate the best stories!

[kaberett]

yupppp

(I left out the bit where she moved to England with her prize-winning grand piano)

[davidgillon]

As an au-pair?!? {boggle}

[kaberett]

Whoops, no, after she got married :)

[booksarelife]

I very audibly cracked up several times while reading this, thank you!! Why is there a stack of disused breadmakers?? Also, how many Kenwood Chef things have you found so far? I'm very intrigued by the locked wardrobe behind a wine rack. Also, how are the LPs staying pristine if they've been sitting in dust and spiders? By commission what do you mean? Also, have you found the ice cream attachment you were looking for??
Also, I don't blame you for turning into a gremlin when the clearance people come!

[kaberett]

Long story short, Papa was both an engineer (so he could fix things, and it genuinely was the case that all sorts of scraps might come in useful) and a hoarder... and probably autistic, with the result that he was easily distractable and prone to executive dysfunction (often via falling down the rabbit hole of the thing in front of him and sort of forgetting anything else existed)...

... so when the first breadmaker broke, he pushed it to one side (to fix, eventually), having carefully labelled the interior tin with the nature of the problem and possible workarounds, and got another to use until he got around to fixing it.

This is also why there were two dead dishwashers and a broken washing machine in the garage.



I will report back on the wardrobe, I promise!


Pristine LPs: they were in a cardboard box, and all in their sleeves; it was only the uppermost one that was particularly spidered, in a general on-top-of-the-mahogany-wardrobe Climate of Spider.


Commission: in the British Army, a commissioned officer is what one thinks of as "an officer"; non-commissioned officers include corporals and sergeants. A commission is the piece of paper bestowing the rank of commissioned officer on someone, signed by All The Top Brass and sometimes by the reigning monarch (if they haven't got bored and set up a rubber stamp).


HAHAHAHA NO I HAVEN'T FOUND THE ICE CREAM MAKER YET. I will be watching removals from the garage like a HAWK.

[booksarelife]

This is all so cool!! So the breadmaker process just repeated itself enough to end up with 4 broken ones? My best guess about the coolness of commissions is that they were signed by an actual monarch, especially in this case, long dead monarchs and signed by hand (I assume), and also tell you who the top brass were and are cool history bits. Good luck tomorrow!!