Mr Trebus and I are just two among millions. Which is why I can't get rid of the giant rocking horse, or the Daughter's Chopper, or the 60-year-old monkey called Roger who belonged to my mother, or lots of her clothes, particularly her evening dresses, which I might one day wear, or her bed-jacket, which I won't ever wear, or piles of my own old clothes that I might wear again (because everyone knows that fashion is cyclical), or my first pair of tiny little blue baby shoes that my mother kept, or all my daughter's school exercise books, all of which is why my home is stuffed to the gills.
And as for toys, well, what if we one day have grandchildren? Or great-grandchildren? They might want to use them. No wonder we're all hoarding them like mad. How can I throw away expensive electrical goods? My mother couldn't bear to throw out brown paper bags or old tights. Besides, how can one just chuck out something that cost hundreds of pounds? It doesn't seem right. But that meant getting them out of the basement, schlepping them to the car and driving them to the dump, which was all a bit of a performance, so I didn't bother, and by the time I wanted to bother, I couldn't remember which were the useless ones, so they're all still there, with a few more in front of them. The plan was that I take the useless ones to the recycling centre. Or could I? I once asked a computer-mender friend to check which ones were useable. What if my current computer breaks down and I need emergency backup? I could use one of those. Why can't I get rid of them? I'll tell you. So the electrical devices are clearly a bit of a problem. I've just checked my basement and found that I have four desktop computers, two sets of speakers, two hi-fis, one monitor, two printers, one radio, two bicycles and a mountain of tins of paint, and that's just the stuff at the front. That's twice as much clutter as we used to have 30 years ago. The average British person has 3,370 cubic feet of his/her home stuffed with items that they rarely, or never, use. According to the researchers, we have a growing problem with clutter in this country, and we find it particularly hard to get rid of electrical devices and toys. So Mr Trebus was at the forefront of social change. My house was also filling up with drek, and I am not alone according to a report commissioned by Lloyds TSB Insurance, the British are hoarding more and more useless clutter – so much so that many of our homes are nearly half full, yes half full, of stuff that we don't need or want.
The neighbours were fed up, the local council in despair, and Mr Trebus was regarded as fairly batty, but I rather sympathised with him. Even his garden was chock-a-block with biscuits and fridges. A few years ago an elderly gentleman in north London called Mr Trebus had stuffed his home from floor to ceiling in every room, with what most of us would call rubbish.
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