I enjoyed making things when I was a child, but because we were short of money - a large gaggle of children squeezed into our council-owned home and too many outgoings squeezed from Dad’s factory wage - there was little money spare to indulge that enjoyment.
And so the things I created were largely made from materials other people had thrown away: home-made newspapers hand-drawn on the backs of computer paper rescued from bins when Mum was cleaning at the Uni; pine trees and Christmas angels made from the cardboard cone-interiors of knitting yarn from the hosiery factory a neighbour worked in and dolls clothes from scraps of fabric rescued by another neighbour who was a machinist in a garment factory. Then there was the Sindy furniture made from shoe boxes and cereal packets, and acorn people with pins for arms and legs who slept in button-fronted matchbox beds.
We were creative children, resourceful, and what we didn’t have to hand we used a workaround to do without. No paints or glue guns or staplers or craft scissors for us, but a sharp knife is excellent for slicing folded paper, flour and water a doable adhesive when there's no wallpaper paste to be had, and a needle and thread an adequate substitute when neither of these are available. And there was that time Mum was given some pinking shears, in the brief sewing phase of her motherhood, though they blunted surprisingly quickly when used to cut up cardboard and couldn’t be guaranteed to’ve been put back in a place you’d easily find them again.
Nothing much in our house was discarded (except, in the end,
for our father, though someone else would go on to make use of him), and there
were old things we managed to turn into something useful with our unique brand
of talent and skill. The stepdad was a difficult workaround, though, as was the
heap of aggro that came with him from Mum bringing him home for repurposing in
the first place.
It explains why I became a hoarder myself, though, with a
tendency to hold on to things long after I should let some of them go.
AM
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