My grandmother had everything I ever needed. On her table… a magnifying glass, a copy of Webster’s Dictionary, the newspaper open at the racing page. My words to my grandmother were, ‘Have you got…?’ She always had… got. She kept everything: little pieces of satin ribbon, buttons of all shapes and sizes, envelopes, pens, pencils, nibs, ink, stamps, shoe laces, tiny containers, paper clips, pins, needles, threads in an array of colours. She kept them all. In her lifetime, these were things she might need one day. After her death, when we cleared everything away – because we always need to clear things away and start afresh – it was clutter.
From: Clutter – a novel (work-in-progress)
