Lifetime brands

 

I’m on the (fingers still crossed) last lap of the house sale and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a period of such intense physical and emotional exhaustion. OK, I’ve brought it on myself in some ways: of course I could have thrown money at it and simply paid someone to do it. Sift through over 60 years’ worth of stuff. Find new homes for some and dispose of the rest as responsibly as possible. Maybe even make a little money in the process. But I simply didn’t have time. 

So if my posts here are lacking in depth, please forgive me. My brain is scrambled - I wake up at unearthly hours wondering what to do with that, what order to do x, y and z, fretting about the logistics of the whole thing, hoping to God that people turn up at the right time.

When I’ve gone to the local dump, aka tip, aka recycling centre, I’ve tried not to dwell on things. But my mind flashes back to when we’d go to the dump to find things, not chuck them. Some pram wheels, a baby billiard board - and, hey presto! - a go-cart. Fat chance of anyone finding anything I’ve chucked, though - they’d have to abseil down into the skips and then risk being crushed by the infernal machines, lurching over the containers like mechanical birds of prey.

It’s been a dusty parade of brand names, mostly long forgotten, that have tumbled into those skips. Occasionally, I’ll find myself humming a jingle and seriously not know whether it was real, or something I made up when I was a small child. Pax-i-mat elect-ric!

But amongst these mid-century relics, there are a few brands that - I think - are in it for life. Like Thermos - in the same way as Hoover, is this a brand name or an item? I was slightly surprised to read that Thermos was founded in Germany (it now has its HQ in the US and is under Japanese ownership) - maybe that is significant, somehow.

My first memories of Thermos flasks were on Tarshyne Beach, Aden. All the families had them, to keep orange squash cold and coffee hot. Back then, they came in garish stripes like deckchairs, or a wicker design like the furniture in the Officers’ Club. Later, back in cold and gloomy Britain, they were lugged round caravan sites, lochs and glens, mountains and castles.

On the website today, the copy says that Thermos flasks are for “adventurers, explorers and everyday folks like us”...

... so I have a new-ish Thermos. It became my Covid companion on long drives from home to home. And the habit stuck. Here’s to the next adventure!