Lesley Boland #20 a love of things

The things we keep are not the things we planned to keep.  Like the dining room table.  Painted black and peeling.  It extends, and we’ve extended it, on two or three occasions.  It extends so far that we have insufficient chairs, and have to bring in the white plastic ones from outside, or sit two people next to each other on the piano stool.  But it’s junk, and it came from the junk yard.  Six years ago, when we were furnishing our first flat.  I do not know if we will ever let it go.  

There is other furniture that is gone, but which never leaves my memory.  The dining room table that we might have had.  And the chairs that went with it.  These were the ones from the house I grew up in.  The table was rectangular and also extendable, but the surface was a plastic wood veneer and the frame made from green-painted metal.  The chairs were like apples; red vinyl seat, matching green frame, and a curved ply backrest.  Without consultation, my father took them all to the tip, and they were never seen again.