The buyers of the house were getting very impatient for a date for vacant possession - you have to wait for probate before the sale can be completed - and when we finally got that it was a mad scramble to settle the matter before they lost interest in buying. By last Saturday the garage was still full of furniture and boxes awaiting collection by No 2 son, but by Sunday that was dealt with, and on Monday we finally handed over the keys of the house. I paid a last visit on Sunday, and said my goodbyes to Michael yet again, almost a year after he left there himself. Stripped though the house was, it was still his place. Here are two pictures of him, aged 16 months and 83.
I have taken advantage of all this house clearance, to get rid of some furniture of my own for which I no longer have a need. When the auctioneers came to collect my husband's unwanted furniture, I said a sad goodbye to this child's cot-bed, which I have sent to the auction house as well. It was bought for my mother in 1902 from Heal's in London - I had the receipt to say so - and I and my children have also slept in it. To my regret, I never got a grandchild here to use it though, and now they are all too big. I wept a little before letting it go. I kept my teddybear however. He is not quite so old as the cot, but almost as old as me.
