Hello, Goodbye

          We have often fantasised about living in some of the places we been to during our travels and now, fantasy is about to become reality. In a few weeks’ time we’ll be moving to Plymouth, a city that I know from adolescence. It’s smaller than Manchester and it’s a seaport, so it has quite a different feel, but that is the point – to experience living somewhere different – while we are still able. We’d had it in mind to migrate there a couple of years hence, but covid has catalysed events, challenging assumptions about likely future outcomes and putting pressure on timelines. Much is about to change in the way many of us live, our cities, our infrastructure and our freedom of movement so, with all that in the offing, now seems like the time to stop dreaming and make an actual move.

          Preparations for moving home include taking stock of possessions that need to be transported. We don’t have much, having downsized just six years ago, yet a reappraisal swiftly identified at least one item that need not follow us around any longer: my collection of CDs. The fact is, since I copied them all on to a hard drive around ten years ago, I haven’t laid a hand on a single one of them. Not that I have gone off listening to music – far from it – but CDs are just as redundant in the life I now lead as shellac discs and disposable gramophone needles were at the time I first bought a record, which (for the record) was in 1959. Even so, the tedious process of digitising the CDs was, in the end, pointless, since, for a modest monthly subscription, all that music is now available to stream online.

          And there is more: internet-enabled TV brings musical treasures galore straight to your favourite armchair. Last night, for example, I caught up on a bio of Count Basie that gave an insight into the man, as well as the music. Which reminds me: unlikely though it may seem, I do not expect my membership of the Heatons Jazz Appreciation Society to be revoked on the grounds of geographical disqualification. These past few months have seen its activities confined to Zoom anyway and, since the members mostly fall into the upper age-range ‘at risk’ category, the likelihood of physical meetings in the foreseeable future is small. I am confident that it will adapt to the times, as with its latest project, a plagiarised form of Desert Island Discs, which reflects the ‘marooned’ feeling we all have and seeks to bring us all together over the ether.  

          Not all decisions regarding possessions are straightforwardly dependent on logic, as anyone sorting through their cupboards will tell you. What do you do about the sentimental stuff – the love letters, the photos, the books inscribed with birthday wishes? The obvious answer, supposing one has the space, is that there is no need to dispose of them: take them along and let someone else do it for you when your time is up. Nevertheless, to put a perspective on this conclusion, the world is full of refugees and victims of destruction who have been left with nothing but memories, so I consider it a privilege even to have a choice in the matter. I will be taking my personal mementoes with me for as long as I can.

          Which just leaves one outstanding matter and the only one of real consequence: the friends we will leave behind. After so long in one place it is certainly not a matter of “easy come, easy go” (though in a few cases this is true) it is a case of wrenching oneself away. It didn’t feel like that when I left London, but I was younger then and the sense of adventure for what lay ahead easily overwhelmed any hankering to stay. Perhaps the secret to the success of this move is to try to emulate that optimism of youth and not dwell too much on the past.