I always seem to arrive late to a trend. Although I’ve made up for it since, I never watched Friends when it first aired in the UK. At school I would wonder what a ‘Rachel hairstyle’ was and why everyone was debating whether ‘they were on a break’ or not.
And it was the same for music and fashion. Oasis were selling albums in Poundland by the time I liked their music and I even bought a parka jacket in 2003 to put on and show off my britpop swagger. I was a good 5 years too late though and my hair wouldn’t live forever. I was a bald Liam Gallagher. I had the shades and a rollie cigarette hanging from the mouth.
Could I look any cooler?!
Ah, but that parka jacket. It has 20 years of memories. If you were to dig deep inside the pockets you could probably still make a rollie out of the grains of tobacco that remain.
So when it came to packing up our house, we had to be ruthless. For our move to Portugal, we have decided to be more ‘minimalist’. Not everything in our home can make the cut to be transported over to Portugal. DVD’s took a hit. All I could salvage was my collection of Friday The 13th DVD’s. Labyrinth made its way to the charity shop. A decision I could later regret.
And lots of clothes had to go. I had a phase of buying Penguin shirts from TK Max. I must have been in a slimmer phase when I bought them. They’ve gone. Jeans that I can’t get past my calves when I try to squeeze into them. They’ve gone. There were a pair of undies in the bottom of my drawer too that looked as old as the parka. Fear not, they didn’t get sent to the charity shop. They’ll be recycled into a polishing rag. They’ll be making many a knob shiny in our new house.
But it’s actually getting rid of the parka that was the hardest of all. It was quite a symbolic moment as I made the decision to let it go.
I feel sad that I will never put that big coat on again. And I feel a bit guilty that it will never be worn by me again. Maybe I could go back to the charity shop to buy it back.
I’d just tell it that we were on a break.
Never Give Up PT 