Today Mum and I went to Nanny’s house and met her daughter to pick up some things we’d been storing there. It was so sad. I’ve been going to that house regularly since the day I was born, and the thought of it being sold is another huge adjustment. I have both very good and very bad memories attached to it, but more than anything it feels like home.
As we were walking through the garden, I spotted Nanny’s creepy garden gnomes and asked her daughter if I could have them. She said absolutely, so I’ll take them on Tuesday when I go back to sort through more things. I told Mum we could put the gnomes in our front garden with some plastic pink flamingos, and she was not impressed with that idea.
What I love about garden gnomes and plastic flamingos is that they’re considered working-class iconography. I’m not working at the moment, so I can’t call myself working class right now, but I have been for most of my working life. My parents were not working class.
Below you can see Nanny’s kitchen. When I was a child, I used to stand at the end of the table and sing one particular song for her adult children and anyone who would listen. The song was Somewhere Out There from the 1980s cartoon movie An American Tail.
As a child — and even now — I’ve always loved songs like that. They’re like the Disney “I want” songs: full of longing, hope, and the idea of a better, different life. It probably sounds like I’m being ungrateful for the privileged upbringing I had, but I’m really not. I was, and still am, incredibly lucky.
I’ve put the movie version of the song under the photo. You’ll see two little mice singing it — and that’s exactly how I used to sing it.
