I was called to look through a skip over the weekend, where my friend had seen some records and thought i may be interested, and the prompts of Ragtag, Fandango and Your Daily Word Prompt seemed to get together pretty well today. As it turned out I found about 30 7′ singles and 30 albums and 12’s, some of the packaging and sleeves a bit damaged but the records inside were pretty much all in mint condition, with a little cleaning. It was a wonderful booty of Japan and David Sylvian records, with I am ploughing through as we speak, this doesn’t happen very often and despite being delighted with it all I chose not to focus on the good, only the bad. Hope you like it.

After a brief interlude to search for the broom handles, I’d purchased some months ago at the beginning of lockdown, just after some non essential shops opened and before the pubs flung wide their doors to Drink Britain well again. They were still sheathed in lovely fitting plastic and broom handle white with the dusty residue still manifest, despite the shed floor being prised open by a bramble which was wrapping itself around the strimmer.

We’ed been rifling through a skip on Sunday afternoon in the field next to the horses, N had already found a few tools and lathe cutting implements at the one end which didn’t look like something had died in there; horse blankets twisted with clumps of rough torn hair sprouting out of gaps. Oily residue on a sleeping bag underneath a broken wardrobe, erect with needle sharp rusty furniture tacks, primed to rip a tetanus tear. Then a stained mattress, brown and stale, with swirls of the seventies and small white eyelets on the side stark against the material griminess where ants bustled. Cups and saucers wrapped in newspaper, yellow with age and forgotten diplomats, whole dinner services, falling down newly exposed chasms, amongst the detritus. Then a selection of books; paranormal and fantastical, conspiracy theories, Lord of the Rings, Fighting Fantasy, metal figurines in plastic bags, a battalion of Goblins or Orcs. Children’s exercise books, from way back, the pencil fading but the words clinging on for some recognition, education ended, maybe a Mother’s keep sake, for nought.

It felt we were probing a dead man’s mausoleum, open in the field, unburied and forgotten in the space between life and death, Pastoral Purgatory, here in the paint splattered Skip, in the corner of the dung littered field. How many past lives had been disposed of this way? How many memories left to fester and decompose as the rain fell as Davies Skips from Stourport found a window to collect and throw it all in a big hole in the ground, as if into a soil filled Hellish Maw.