Muxton – Weird Thoughts I Have Sat On The Toilet

Tag: Muxton

Is sentimentality inevitable?

Just four months ago, I moved, with my little family, from Shrewsbury to the lesser known village of Muxton, near Telford. That move was a huge wrench for me. It was also a temporary move as the permanent move, to a house in Newport, wasn’t ready to happen. There are lots of reasons for this, which I won’t go into, mostly because I don’t pay attention to the reasons. But the reasons existed.

However, next week, the permanent move is finally going to happen. Next week, I will be moving from Muxton to Newport.

The temporary move was to a house which I fondly refer to as The Rented House. I have never loved The Rented House. In fact, I have always felt a strong dislike for The Rented House. I’d rather be out of The Rented House than in it. This dislike is manifested by the amount of time I’ve been spending in Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury since we moved. This dislike can be seen in the amount of money I currently spend on petrol and coffee.

This dislike is partly based on location (Telford – sorry Telford but compared to Shrewsbury you are a bit of an armpit), partly based on the style of house (1990s modern yet already falling to bits – honestly, this house is a right state) and partly based on what it represented – a move from a life I loved muchly.

My artistic interpretation of The Rented House

However, despite all of the above, over the last four months I have grown to love The Rented House in a bizarre love-hate unexpected way. I would even go as far as to say that I will miss it when the move to the permanent house finally happens.

The Rented Staircase

I feel as if I have gone through a lot while living for a short period in The Rented House. It has been a fun, fabulous, emotional, turbulent four months. I have dragged myself kicking and sometimes screaming towards a BA in Fine Art and I have laughed and cried my way to the end of May. It has been a time in my life I will never forget.

The messy Rented Kitchen

I feel a weird emotional attachment to The Rented House, the house that I hated on first sight. Why is that? Am I then just a naturally sentimental creature? Do I feel a inevitable attachments to ‘things’ whatever they may be, houses or otherwise? I think the answer is ‘yes’. I do find myself getting quite attached to things very easily. After all, try to take my cuddly poo off me and risk bodily injury. So, am I just going to be sentimental wherever I am, however happy or unhappy I am? I don’t leave any attachments to people in Muxton. Muxton isn’t Shrewsbury, not even close. Only one parent has spoken to me at the school gates since we moved here and that was just last week, I won’t miss Muxton. In fact, Muxton is confusing and weird to me. Yet, I feel oddly sad. The only thing I will miss is my Muxton lamppost.

The view out of the window

I know that I will shed a tear or two on Thursday. I didn’t think I would, but I will. I will leave a part of me in this funny old 1990s falling apart house fondly known to me and my boys as The Rented House. Bye bye number 33.

The messy Rented Sittingroom

Stuff, more stuff, and even more stuff

January 11, 2017 / Becky / 0 Comments

Moving house has made me realise how much STUFF we own as a household of five people. We have temporarily moved from a roomy four-story four-bedroom Victorian house with lots of cupboards and space to keep ‘stuff’ to a ironically-small five-bedroom 1990s detached house. We have managed to fill this more-rooms-but-smaller house with our STUFF. It is everywhere. I can walk for stuff. I trip over stuff. I sit on stuff. There is nowhere to put the stuff. I fear that I am going to drown in stuff.

Here are some pictures of this stuff:

Shoes.

Books.

Scarfs – Dr Who ones.

Random Stuff.

More random stuff.

What would life be like if we got rid of 50% of our stuff? I’m not talking about the books, or my clothes, of course, but other stuff. The general ‘stuff’. I’m sure there wouldn’t be a psychological breakdown. I’m sure we’d survive.

Artist Michael Landy famously destroyed all of his stuff over a period of two weeks for an art performance, except the clothes he was wearing. He claimed that he lasted without stuff for mere minutes as people immediately gave him stuff out of sympathy. He also reported a strange sense of anxiety and loss immediately afterwards, until he gathered new stuff, like a rolling stone that gathers moss. He said that he struggled the most with the loss of those objects that cannot be replaced: letters, gifts, tokens of memory. He didn’t miss the general crap that we all own: books (I hate to include those), DVDs, clothes (and those), shoes, paper, post, STUFF. So there is a lesson to be learnt there.

I wish I were brave enough to get rid of some of this stuff. But I think the hoarder-next-door part of me just doesn’t want to do it. So, I think I will have to be content with drowning in stuff here in Muxton. At least I’ll be well-dressed and among good books as I go.

Little pieces scattered around – with some left to spare

January 5, 2017 / Becky / 0 Comments

I have just four days left to live. At least, that is, to live in Shrewsbury. I’ve lived here for over eight years. I’m really quite very sad to be leaving. I have just returned from a trip around town, buying parting gifts and paying in cheques and other such errands. As I was walking around, after a lovely coffee in my current favourite coffee shop, I felt that sudden, yet familiar pang of melancholy that comes with endings. My weird thought is related to that feeling (a feeling I have had before). It seems that every where I have lived, I have left a tiny piece of myself behind. That piece of me can be imagined as a big ball of emotions and memories (as opposed to, say, an arm or a leg). Most of that piece will of course remain in me but some of that will stay in the place I am leaving behind. It feels almost as if I am leaving it there so that I must return to check it is still there and it is ok.

The coffee I have just drunk

This means that there is a little bit of me in Stafford (probably lurking around Walton High School or the swings on Weeping Cross). There is also a tiny piece of me in Exeter (in the Lemon Grove drinking a Diamond White – note, not in the library or in the lecture theatre in the Amory Building). And another piece of me lives in Japan (this piece is most definitely in the staff room at Iwatsuki High School eating Hershey’s kisses). Yet another lives in Oxford and another in the lovely village of Charlbury, where I lived before coming to Shrewsbury. And now I must leave another piece of me here in Shrewsbury. What remains of me, will have to travel to Muxton and then on to Newport after that. Will I need to make sure I have more pieces after that for future moves? I don’t know.

My favourite street in Shrewsbury

But as I say goodbye to my Shrewsbury piece, I will do so with a heavy heart. The good thing is that I won’t be too far away. I know I will be back to visit myself many, many times from this weekend onwards. I need to check that my Shrewsbury ball of emotions and memories is doing ok. I’m sure it will be.

Weird Thoughts I Have Sat On The Toilet

Tag: Muxton

Is sentimentality inevitable?

Stuff, more stuff, and even more stuff

Little pieces scattered around – with some left to spare

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