The Bookcase

There is a bookcase in my home
It’s well made
But I don’t think I like it very much
And I’m not sure I ever really did
But it is useful, very useful

You see it holds all this stuff:
CDs I no longer listen to
Books I probably wont read
Games that were barely played when my children were younger
And certainly don’t get played now
And an album that hasn’t been listened to yet

And on top of it is a ‘holiday box’
The box is way too big for the things inside
And does not really fit anywhere else
But it’s half hidden on top of the unit and that’s useful

The holiday box has various leftovers and takeaways from holidays
Sweet wrappers, drinks mixers, lollipop sticks, tickets,
A few small swimming pool tiles, half finished colouring in
That sort of thing
For a long time my girls could remember everything in that box
Everything about everything in that box
And then one day, they just couldn’t, it was just stuff again

Anyway

If I got rid of the stuff, the bookcase would be empty
And then I’d have to get rid of it
Or if I just got rid of the bookcase anyway
The stuff would just then be on the floor
Or we’d have to put it somewhere else
Out of the way
And that wouldn’t do at all

And moreover, there’s a wall behind the bookcase
That wall is in a funny place
And would likely just be empty and blank
If the bookcase were taken away
So I need the bookcase to occupy the wall
and the stuff is there to fill the bookcase

But I suppose the wall could go

Although thinking about that, it too is useful
You see, behind that wall is a toilet
And we couldn’t well have the toilet room exposed
All down one side
Although you’d probably be able see the telly from there if you did
And that might be okay if you were the one on the toilet
But it might not and I don’t think it’d be so good for everyone else
So I don’t think that is a runner

I suppose the whole toilet area could go

But the problem with that is that its under the stairs
And next to the toilet, using one if its walls, is the ‘under-the-stairs’ area

Now, the under-the-stairs space, feels like part of the old house
as it used be
Before various renovations
And it has a little prayer card in there
I think from the owner before last
and, so the story goes,
she was first to live in the house
And it reminds me of my gran and growing up
So I can’t get rid of that

And anyway stairs are useful and without an under-the-stairs
I can’t see how the stairs would work anymore

They’d just be all along the floor

And then I’d have the stairs all along the floor
Together with the CDs, books and games, that LP, and the too big
holiday box

No, the stairs will have to stay where they are and they too are useful
They lead to more house

And equally importantly, another set of stairs
Those second set of stairs run over the top of the first set of stairs
And together they make the stairway and so if nothing else
The stairs need each other

And anyway without these stairs I couldn’t get upstairs
To the top of the house
Now the top of the house was changed
There’s a room up there with a telly and whatnot
It’s a good room and I wouldn’t want to lose that

But more importantly there are the spaces around that room
Around that room are the attic spaces
Like a crown of stuff around the head of the house

One part is a little room itself
There we’ve got:
Christmas decorations
Luggage
Sleeping stuff
Camping equipment that we don’t use anymore
I loved comping but I also definitely love not camping anymore
And the camping stuff reminds me of both
And you just never know.
And a there’s a small array of other things
These other things have no real use or emotional value
Yet they hide out up there, amongst the more useful stuff

And then, then there are the real attic spaces

The gaps between the roof and the walls and the ceilings
The real stuff that’s in permanent stasis
The old toy dolls house the children didn’t quite want to let go
The wedding box
The growing up box
Boxes from my wife’s family and their old photos
Boxes from my family and their old photos
Memories and things, sometimes forgotten and sometimes only
reluctantly remembered
Boxes of school books and children’s drawings
Half-kept perhaps because the girls might need stuff for their attics
when they’re older

And there are boxes of boxes up there, as I heard you should keep
them

There’s also a half-finished model boat
It was there when we got here
And I think I want to leave it there when we go

It’s all stacked, stashed, piled and stuck
It may be holding the roof up and the walls in place for all I know
The last job done on the house wasn’t the best
A bit of a botch job at times, in truth
So this may be necessary
And the stuff must be insulating the house too
Because that isn’t all it should be either

And so I figure we should keep the bookcase and its stuff, the wall, the
toilet, the under-stairs and the stairs
And we can’t just have a house that’s some shelves, its stuff, a wall or
two from a toilet room, an under-the-stairs, two sets of stairs and some
attic space

There’d be no spaces for any people
And no walls to stop everything falling out
So I guess we can say that everything can stay

And anyway, we’ve got a cat now
And the cat doesn’t go outside,
So we definitely need all the doors, walls and windows that we’ve got
For the cat