Number 64: end of an era. Tool Shed

Mum and Teedee used to lock the tool shed door with a padlock. The day before I was going to start on clearing it out Rye commented to Teedee that its not being locked was what we wanted because if anyone stole anything from it (after climbing over Fort Knox barriers to get into the back garden anyway) this would be a good result! Unfortunately, the long screw just keeping the door shut proved enough of a deterrent and all the "depth of life" (see Roger Scruton quote at the end) accumulations within were still there next morning. The next four photos are what I was faced with.

You can see from the walls that this had been the coal shed. The green plastic sack that you might be able to pick out in one of the photos contained coal. So did a couple of others. I presume they had been there for fifty-two years. This has me wondering if any of the rusted tools had been there when our parents bought the house too or just accumulated over those years, perhaps from our grandparents' tool sheds. I laid out on the lawn what I found, thinking more than once that I wished I could donate the rusty metal to an artist like Harriet Mead. After checking with Teedee that Nigel the gardener brings his own tools, these were destined for metal recycling at the council tip.

I was tempted to claim the sticks and old broom poles to be used as plant markers on the Boggy Brae but didn't in the end – practising letting MBUs go! I did claim the retractable rake (far left of middle pic) and have used it. Teedee gave the red handled fork (huge and heavy!) to the retired Poulton College gardener who has been gardening for Mum – still climbing the old apple tree into his seventies! and pruning it – for fifteen years.

Rye took one of the two old shell cases to store knitting needles. She'll have to clean out the soot first.

By the time I got to finding the hinges and cog of the old garage door, some which had run along a curved rail, I was thinking, again, WHY!? Why didn't they throw anything out? The bog standard up and over replacement garage door has been in situ for decades. Sometimes the "why feeling" got a bit overwhelming, like when I found a bowl of rubble in the garage 😩. My inherited tidy-mindedness gene is telling me how nice that it was kept tidily. My for goodness' sake chuck it out gene is screaming! 😂

All I put back in the tool coal shed were the bags of coal and a lot of boxes of firewood that the garden had generated over many years. Toad and I brought home a couple of boxes from the garage as it wouldn't all fit in the 'coil oil' (Yorkshire for coal hole). If whoever buys Number 64 doesn't want free coal and firewood (there are still two fireplaces), I guess Teedee will have to order another skip.

A couple more pics of old tools:

I found this Roger Scruton quote this morning. It seems apposite and is a little comforting. We five had good parents who were full of life. Their lives had depth.