Old Joe's Old Chair: time past, time present

Over 40 years ago we lived in Suffolk. In a village 25 minutes' drive away lived Old Joe and his sister Rose. Joe was an osier, that is, he made baskets out of willow canes. ("Osier" just means "willow," of a certain sort.) Beautiful baskets, light, strong, in subtle natural colours. 

He showed us how he soaked them (horrible cold dirty-looking water in a big tin bath arrangement) to make them flexible. He had strong hands that worked quickly and firmly, but showed the wear and tear of his trade. His outdoor workspace was - rough and ready, to put it gently.

Joe and Rose lived in what at a safe distance looked like a picturesque thatched cottage. It was...not in good nick. Inside, it was a bit of a jumble, but no doubt it was how they liked it. It could have been called "a bit of a slum" by an outsider driving past.

 This sort of thing - but this isn't Joe's place.

Perhaps it's now a second home, cleaned out, done up to the nines, owned by someone wealthy.

It looked as though they lived on very little - certainly, his baskets were good value given the hours he put into them. They had a sturdy, hand-made look to them, not like the uniform, smooth mass-produced and mostly imported baskets that I would guess put Joe out of business a long time ago.

Joe had a little high voice and a very strong Suffolk accent. He wore a grubby old fawn mac tied up with string. We told him the name of the village where we lived. "I bin there once!" he squeaked. "Man on the beach there selling...oranges and...apples..." 

For a moment, it sounded as exotic as it must have looked to Joe, all of nine miles away from his cottage.

Joe and Rose seemed uncompromisingly "authentic." They weren't part of any heritage industry. I never saw any kind of advertising - you went there because someone told you about it. They seemed living relics from an ancient rural past.

Joe agreed to make us a willow-cane chair; a new task to him, but he reckoned if he made an oddly-shaped basket, turned it over and fitted a back and sides, it would work. He gave it thought, and a lot of care.

It worked. It was very light, and it creaked delightfully every time you moved in it. It seemed like an artefact from a different century (we weren't especially keen on aspects of our century back then.) It was wide enough to sit in with a guitar. It was entirely unique. Old Joe's chair.

Joe's chair, I found recently, was full of woodworm, and the rats had got at it. It had to go.

It made me sad, and yet I had hardly used it for years - decades. It wasn't really all that comfortable, though lovely to look at. 

But it was so much of its time, that time in our lives. A new baby, new friends who are now now old friends, folk music, Barsham Fair, Sandy Denny solo at the Ipswich Corn Exchange - I've an additional big nostalgic name checklist I'm not going to drop on you.

Rose died soon after we left Suffolk, and since she kept Joe going, ran the house and so on, I don't like to think how his final years might have been. 

Nothing is constant in this universe, except change. We're all nomads. Old Joe's gone, and now so has his chair, a link between our garden now and our garden then, our lives now and our lives then.

Trying to hold on to the past just makes it hurt more. I have to allow my nostalgic sadness, not try to squash it. I have to be with those feelings, in the present. 

And I have to take the chair to the tip.   

But I won't forget Joe and Rose.