My remembrance of things past

Objects sometimes bring back many lost memories, don’t they?

In Proust, it was the flavour of the little cake known as a Madeleine that – he fictionally claims – brought back his Remembrance of things past. With me, it has been two much more solid, and far less edible, items.

One of my most painful characteristics, certainly from adolescence into middle age, was fecklessness about money. I don’t entirely regret it – my boys had some memorable holidays as children – but I remember with horror the struggle to cope with a mountain of credit card debt and the harrowing conversations with bank managers about badly-managed overdrafts.

That only ended when I was made redundant for the second of the three occasions in my career. Fortunately, because my boss (and friend) had persuaded me to come back from abroad to take the job from which he later dismissed me, I’d negotiated myself a long notice period, as an insurance policy that served me well when I now had to call it in.

This meant that my redundancy pay was substantial. Indeed, it covered not just the seven weeks for which I was out of work (unlike my third and last redundancy, this one led to a very short gap in employment) but also enabled me to pay off all my debts. Since then, helped by Danielle who was always much more effective at managing our affairs, I’ve learned to live within my means and avoid new debts.

Redundancy, a hurtful experience, turned out to be beneficial in this instance.

Looking back on the period before I learned that lesson, I can see that I had mistakenly modeled myself on a misinterpretation of my father’s behaviour. He was generous and he cultivated an appealing air of carelessness towards money. The reality, I now realise, was different and he managed his affairs far more wisely than I understood. He had a good income but I’m sure, now, that if he avoided debt it was because he combined it with intelligent self-control.

But that’s not the image he liked to present. On the contrary, he affected a devil-may-care, big-spender image. I’m not blaming him for my own poor behaviour, but I admired him and may well have been influenced by his supposed attitude, which he buttressed with tales of his youth.

He told us, for instance, of the occasion during his life in Paris when he decided he fancied a little smoked ham. He popped out to his local charcuterie, but once there he let the silver-tongued shopkeeper talk him into buying not merely a few slices, but an entire ham, at huge cost. He convinced himself that if made it last two months, buying the whole ham instead of the occasional slice, would save him money. But, with ham readily available, he couldn’t prevent himself popping into the kitchen, at any time of day or night, to cut just one more slice. Again and again. In the end, the ham lasted only a few days.

Something similar happened when he caught sight of a Russian Orthodox cross in an antique shop. He simply couldn’t resist the impulse to buy it, though it took a big chunk out of his salary.

My father's Russian cross

Today, it hangs on a wall at home. And very attractive it is too. It moves me to see it and remember that it was something my father valued. Though I’d have to question whether anyone else would value it as highly: Danielle checked it out on eBay, and you’d have to be on a pretty poor salary for the price of such a cross to make a significant dent in it, even in a single month.

Might he have paid a little over the odds for it?

Seeing the cross also inspires other memories. Of the day when, though he’d told me not to touch it, I couldn’t resist and brought it tumbling to the ground. My father was a man of exceptional equanimity but he had an effective way, without raising his voice, of making it clear when he was displeased. I’ve never fully recovered from his careful explanation of just how displeased he was on that occasion.

Honest, guv. A genuine ancient Roman oil lamp

Another powerful reminder comes from a second object we have on our shelves today. It’s a little clay oil lamp. No genie emerges if you rub it – I’ve tried – but it does make me smile. Wryly.

It was sold to us as a Roman antique during a family visit to Pompeii. I was around eight and we were living in Rome. We visited Pompeii on a Saturday before driving home. A guide attached himself to us and gave us a rather good tour – including, inevitably, some obscene graffiti – before, as we were about to leave, offering my parents the exceptional of buying this antique oil for a knock-down price.

Maybe it was genuine. I’ve never checked, and nor did my parent. Neither of my parents believed that it was anything but a fake, but they also felt that it was a way to offer the guide a bit of tip and leave him convinced that he’d pulled off rather a brilliant trick. Which would make it ironic if it ever turned out to be a priceless antique after all.

Unfortunately, cheap though it was, it left my parents with too little cash to pay the motorway fees for the drive home. Credit cards weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. There were no automated till machines yet. On a Saturday, there was no way to get any money out.

So we drove home on ordinary roads. Which was fine. It was a pleasant trip in good weather. But I was gnawed the whole way with anxiety over my parents having allowed their reserves of money to dip so low they couldn’t even afford motorways.

It strikes me as shameful today that, young as I was, I’d allowed middle-class values to take so firm a hold of me that I suffered anxiety over such a trivial cause.

Perhaps that was another factor that influence me into spending too much as soon as I could – disdaining money to overcome my fears of not having any.

Either way, the modest little oil lamp provides me with an even more chilling warning against my illusions than the Orthodox cross.

So I’ve inherited two objects that produce a powerful and salutary effect on me. Good to have them around. Among many other things, that’s another cause of gratitude towards my father.