My youngest is just discovering the value of stuff. He's still not quite absorbed the value of money, although having his bicycle stolen last year impressed him when he had to add up the costs of its parts, but the careless disregard for property that once defined him is now much better in tune with my own attitudes. He finds some of the behaviours of the young people he works with quite abhorrent; carelessly breaking or discarding stuff that, though it may have little intrinsic value, represents some use of resources or energy or some investment of time or of money.
I suffer the tyranny of stuff as well of course, but that angst is largely existential (at least until I wish to move house). My relationship with the inert can be quite significant.
Some years ago (we're talking five, no more than ten) when the children were still holidaying with us, I recall a summer when we seemed to visit a large number of National Trust properties and, since we had children in tow, visiting attractions always ended in a swift exit through the souvenir shop. While children were fantasising over ownership of stuffed toys, I found my attention was generally directed towards the stationary. For all their faults, the National Trust, certainly at that time, did a mean line in stationary. I could only afford to admire these wares however, never to indulge.
It so happened that on this particular holiday to the South West of England, we visited Trengwainton Gardens, near to Penzance. Trengwainton is an unsurprising property in the National Trust mould. I remember that the weather was not especially warm, I recall some views from the lawn outside of the house grounds, which, for sensible financial reasons, we were not entitled to enter. I know that on the pines up there I found a spectacular moth caterpillar. Walking back down to the entrance, through woodland with chipped bark trails, the children rushed around, finding their own paths in the leaf litter. I brought up the tail, ensuring that no-one was left behind.
Just off the path, lying abandoned, I came across a pencil. It was one of the Trust's own, as available for some outrageous price (maybe they were a fiver, it's not important). A mundane writing stick made plush by the application of some fine marbled paper wrap, now damp and limp and looking less attractive than the ones in the shop that we were certain to encounter momentarily. I took pity on this unloved object, likely once gifted to a child with careless pockets who, perhaps, would have preferred a less grown-up memento of their visit to damp gardens.
The pencil dried out, though it never quite returned to the glossy original appearance; I came to like the slightly distressed look; the paper not quite adhering to the wood as it should, the surface still pretty, but matt.
I found it convenient at home to keep possession of this unique object. Most other stationary in the house had common ownership. Writing tools were prone to being tucked into school bags at the last moment whenever the previous implement had gone astray, but the marbled pencil was sufficiently unique, sufficiently tatty, to avoid this fate. I used it for years, always gaining that small pleasure from its beauty and from it being a found object; my thoughts would have been different if I had known it had been paid for. As happens, it became shorter with sharpening, the remaining scrap of marbled paper began to lose adhesion with the pencil and it used to crackle faintly if I rolled it in my fingers while I paused to think.
Eventually, not ever so long ago, its length was so reduced that sharpening it, indeed holding it, became inconvenient. I've switched now to a Scooby Doo pencil, once briefly the pride and joy of one of my brood. It seems to have stuck. No-one has rushed away with it to write a telephone message, no-one has stolen it on a morning when caught short of writing tools on their way out. Two thirds of this tool remain. If I feel an attachment, it is to the child that once owned it. Yet, as I sharpened it over the kitchen bin this morning, I could already feel myself begin to mourn it. It may, after all, only have a couple of years left.
I'm sure that somewhere I still have the stub of the National Trust pencil. perhaps I'll find it in a drawer one day and fond memories will return. For now though it is just part of the accumulated tyranny.
