Farewell to an Old Friend

After fifty years together the time has come when we must say goodbye to an old friend that has stuck with us for all this time.

The friendship began in Wolverhampton where we had a first floor flat at Compton. As the garden was down an external flight of steps and facilities had to be shared with several other flats it was essential that we took steps to be reasonably independent. This meant we had to invest…

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the princely sum of 7s 6d for drying facilities of our own. Thus began the friendship and years of service that have lasted until now. It’s time to pension our old friend off. Over the years our friend has lost the ability to stand up straight and the creaking noise from his joints is agonising for all who hear it. He has developed a bit of a list and if you look closely you may see that he cannot put one foot flat on the floor. We pamper him a bit and he always gets the warmest place next to the radiators. In the summer he may even get a treat and be let out onto the garden patio to soak up the sun.

We haven’t told him yet but he is to be replaced by a brash modern model made of metal that is only half his weight. We just hope that this new posh bit realises that it has to last 2500 years to give us the same value for money as our old wooden friend.

Our old friend will not be deserting us entirely; we have no intention of consigning him to the Council’s incinerator. Disjointed he may become but we are sure that he will give us many more years service in the form of stakes for our garden plants.

So let his epitaph be: “Not Gone or Forgotten.”