The photo albums
I had a horrible dream last night that my parents’ house was burning down. In the dream I ran madly around their home trying to rescue all the things we most cherish – Grandpa’s war medals, treasured items of jewellery, favourite books, seemingly endless shelves of my Mum’s carefully arranged photo albums documenting 100 years of family history.
And as the fire engulfed the Swiss Family Robinson style tree house that they were living in (it was a dream you know), I awoke in a panic desperately hoping I’d got to every single one of those bloody photo albums in time.
Awake and in a slightly fevered state, my mind naturally turned to the location of all the items in my house that I needed to save if by chance, it suddenly caught on fire right now.
- Passports (I’m not going through the hassle of replacing them).
- A quilt my mother sewed for me.
- The excellent present that my Aunts gave me for my 18th birthday.
- The shoebox of letters and postcards from my nearest and dearest.
- The other shoebox of old photo negs.
- The external hard drive back-up with the rest of my life on it…
Digital isn’t romantic, but it sure beats lugging piles of photo albums around.
Tags: whimsy
December 17th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Gosh,what an unpleasant dream. You due a trip home, Cocktails? I think your subconscious is trying to tell you something.
I’ve got all my photo albums where I could (maybe) get to them easily, but on reflection I ought to put those shoeboxes full of letters in a more accessible place. It would break my heart if they went up in smoke.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Are you stressed, Cocktails? I hate those gather ye rosebuds while ye may dreams, they’re awfully unsettling, but they do spur you into action.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I hate that – dreams that linger into daylight. It’s never the nice ones is it?
December 17th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Hmmm, this wasn’t meant to be couch-trip type post. I’m not stressed, I’m not going to Australia and I rarely have dreams like this, let alone share them. It’s just Christmas time you know. But thanks for your concern!
December 18th, 2009 at 1:32 am
yeah people talking about their dreams is always dull take heed martin Luther king…
Not sure I’d bother saving anything it is all just stuff after all, the loss of pictures would be shame but my brothers will have some copies and many of my digi ones are on flickr probably just grab a bottle of malt and watch the lot burn down once every one is out.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Not sentimental at all then, BLTP?
December 18th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
I have all sorts of dream that will put me in a panic about something I should probably be doing.
Have a great weekend.
December 19th, 2009 at 12:55 am
There’s so much stuff in my folks house that I’d hate to see disappear. The sewing machine my mum got for Christmas as a child is in there somewhere, as are screeds of photos that remind me of better times. Not sure my folks would save them first, but if I was about, we could work as a team. I could get the nostalgia, my dad could get the collaterol & mum would wait outside for the Fire Brigade :)
December 20th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Thanks for stopping by Keith. Hope you’re having a good weekend – with good, unpanicked dreams to go with it.
Nice to see that someone else is nostalgic Ill Man. I could never, ever let the photos go and neither could my Mum. I don’t know what else you would get, everything else is replaceable isn’t it? Years ago someone broke into our house and nicked a pile of stuff, including my camera – which I could get over, but not the loss of the almost full roll of film that was inside it. Bastards.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I am amazed no-one has yet demanded that you expand on ‘the excellent present my Aunts gave me for my eighteenth birthday’. Surely if ever an enigmatic sentence demanded to be fleshed out into a fully-grown post this is it!
December 21st, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Ah, I don’t wish to mislead you Jonathan – it isn’t terribly exciting. It’s just a piece of Persian decorative art which has particular resonance. It is sadly not the remains of a tattered pink feather boa, complete with mysterious stain, from a splendidly decadent night out on the town with my aunts. Or something like that.