I love these discards; broken, worn-out, grown-out. Partly it is the cuteness; the chubby bodies, the tiny monster wheels (if that makes sense), the knobbly controls and handles. Cuteness is all about disproportion – the gangly legs, the over-large eyes – that somehow confounds our expectations without appearing too disturbing. Partly too it is the […]
The Conveyor Belt
It’s never-ending. All the Things that have ever died from start to finish. And still they keep on coming…
When gas bottles die
Admit it, there’s something a little scary about dead gas bottles. They sit there like unexploded bombs, all that self-contained power waiting to be released, instantly, unexpectedly. They could go off at any moment. Whatever they hold must be dangerous because it is constrained by so much heavy metal, a solid force field neutralising all […]
When doll prams die
It’s an empty doll’s pram. I mean, the pram is empty, not the doll; the doll is just absent, not vacant. Feel free to fill it with memories and emotions, conjecture, a story line or two. It’s designed to be played with, to carry a load of make-believe. Seeing an abandoned pram, it’s hard not […]
When toy cars die
You know, the thought occurs to me that maybe all this writing about the abandoned detritus of our lives is just a tad obsessive. I mean, what is it except an attempt to recuperate the excess, that which has been discarded, and tidy it away in a nice, neat blog? Despite appearances, it is not […]
When fan heaters die
Plucky little fan heaters are further casualties of the winter months when, along with oil heaters, they are called into action, their tiny motors and heating wires pushed to the point of overload. Fan heater death is always a puzzle to me. Why, oh why? They are such simple creatures; shaped like single-cell organisms, they […]
When electric log heaters die
How many fake trees were chopped down to make this fake log heater? It’s a good question and one well-worth considering in depth because a growing number of people are concerned about the destruction of pristine fake forests for use in fake fires (gas or electric) thereby contributing to the release of fake greenhouse gases […]
When office chairs die
There seems to be a disturbing level of chair rage out there. These days, it is rare to come across a dead office chair that hasn’t been wilfully tipped over or mutilated in some way or simply smashed to pieces. Whatever happened to letting chairs die with dignity? Is it really necessary to humiliate them […]
When silver platters die
I know, I know. It’s not silver and it’s not really a platter. More like a tray. So, to begin again: when tin trays die. Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it? And you know what? I didn’t check to see what it was made from, no biting nor looking for marks. […]
When fans die
If winter is the season of death for heaters then summer is the time when fans fall by the wayside like leaves from the vine. And rather like its sub-species, the fan heater, the death of a fan is always a little baffling. Power goes in, a little motor turns and around go the vanes, […]
When Christmas trees die part 2
About a year ago, I kicked off this series with an entry about dead Christmas trees being put out in the lane for recycling. There’s no prospect of mulching for this one, no wood-chipping or slow decomposition. This one is for keeps. It hasn’t been put out for recycling, a guilt-free discard in the knowledge […]