It was just an old sideboard. Early 1960s, dark wood, faux gold handles. Hardly Antiques Roadshow material. No self-respecting auction house would’ve lowered themselves to put it under their hammer. Indeed, as one tactless relative put it – it was only fit for firewood.
But it was our mum’s. She’d treasured it. And after she died, while emptying her house, my sister and I had to decide the sideboard’s future – a heart wrenching and difficult decision over a piece of furniture which, in truth, neither of us wanted in our own modern homes.
Bought just before our parents’ wedding in 1961, the sideboard, along with matching dining table and six chairs, cost the hefty sum of £95 9s 6d – much more than Dad’s pay-packets for a month back then. We’d found the dining suite receipt along with others (couch, twin tub washing machine with wringer and Formica kitchen cabinet) all meticulously filed inside a folder in one of the sideboards’ four drawers. The table and chairs had been disposed of years earlier. The old sideboard was the sole survivor – the only item of furniture which journeyed with Mum from bride to housewife to mother to widow to The End.
It had been well cared for; no stranger to a yellow duster, a can of Pledge and plenty of elbow grease. Mind you, its surface did bear a few battle-scars. Discoloured splodges caused by dripping candle wax and a watermark courtesy of a cracked flower vase were conveniently camouflaged with crocheted doilies and Lladro ladies. Around the base were tiny bite marks – I’d gnawed the wood attempting to cut teeth over fifty years ago. Dad had patiently magicked the scratches away using a wood repair pen. However, if you peered really close...
So, what was the future going to be for this once stylish piece of furniture? Well, first of all, my sister and I had to empty it. And that took hours.
We sat on the sofa, methodically emptying one drawer at a time, sifting through a lifetime’s worth of keepsakes and memories. Old snapshots, birthday cards and airmail letters jostled for position alongside long forgotten treasures from Mum’s past – her Church Christening card filled out by the “meenister” (intriguingly issued with the wrong name), a postcard of the Ark Royal from an old boyfriend, a ticket stub for Bill Hailey and the Comets. There were papers from Dad’s RAF days, our Baby Clinic cards neatly marked with our weekly weights and inoculation dates, a poem I wrote (aged 15) on lined paper ripped from a school jotter, bits and bobs of costume jewellery, playing cards, dominos, a People’s Friend sewing kit card, a box of Wade Whimsies and a purse-full of LSD (for those born after the 70s, pre-decimal money not psychedelic drugs.) We created four piles of stuff – my pile, her pile, the charity pile and the “do-we-bin-it?” pile.
The large cupboard below the drawers had a door you pulled downwards to open. Throughout my childhood and beyond, this was referred to by my parents as “the draw doon bit of the sideboard”. As it opened, the hinges issued a unique creaky whine no amount of WD40 had ever been able to eradicate – a whine I’d recognise anywhere. I could be outcast on the dark side of Mercury or Muirkirk, hear that distinctive screech and confidently say –
‘That’s the draw doon bit of my Mum’s sideboard.’
From its depths we unearthed boxed dessert forks (never used), boxed linen napkins (ditto) and more sugar, cream and cruet sets than you could shake a cocktail stick at – oh yes, there were vintage boxes of them too. Gravy boats, vegetable tureens, sandwich trays, cake plates, jelly dishes and Mum’s wedding china – a delicate pale blue and white dinner service decorated with gold leaf – all emerged from the shelves in immaculate condition. Deemed too good to be used, Mum kept them pristine for “special occasions” in the future.
My favourite find was six Babycham glasses. Don’t tell anyone…but…my Gran served me a chilled Babycham in one of these glasses to bring in the New Year when I was about six. She thought, naively, because the label bore the word “Baby” and a cute “Bambi”, Babycham was a “wean’s” drink.
We bubble wrapped and boxed these glasses, then added them to my pile.
Once the sideboard was empty, despite our sentimental hearts yearning to hold onto it, our logical heads told us to face the inevitable – it had to go.
So, we contacted a charity shop. But they respectfully declined our donation of a (possibly) unsellable bulky item as did the three other charities we approached.
Next, we stuck it on Gumtree and Facebook – for free. Surely Mum’s beloved sideboard would attract the attention of an artistic student or a trendy young couple craving the Retro Look? Someone who’d strip the varnish, sand it down, jazz it up with bright paint and stencils. But no takers.
‘Put it out for the Council Bin lorry,’ the tactless relative suggested. But we couldn’t contemplate Mum’s sideboard meeting an undignified end, smashed to splinters in the crusher then rotting in landfill.
Last resort – early one morning, we placed it out on the pavement with a sign sellotaped to its front –
“Looking for a new home. If you want me, please take me.”
The sideboard vanished sometime that afternoon; a scribbled “Thank You” note shoved through the letterbox.
Five years on, I like to think it’s been spruced up and sits, packed to the gunnels with another family's treasure trove, in a home in our town.
I’d love, sometime in the future, to be walking along a street, past a row of houses and catch, from an open window, a familiar “nip-yer-teeth” whine and say –
‘That’s the draw doon bit of my Mum’s sideboard.’