What do we ever truly wholly own?

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

There are three cracks running from top to bottom on the inside of my Chelsea mug; against the white they look like long thick dark strands of hair. The base still appears sound, but I’d look a right plonker if it fell apart and scorched me with boiling hot tea. Binned. It’s a goner.

That mug was emblazoned solely with the club’s crest. Adorned with photos of the 2010 Double team, the mug that qualifies as my mug reminds me of the day I turned 50, stomping exuberant and ebullient around a bar in Greece, swigging a bottle of Jameson from the neck, watching Chelsea win at Wembley.

In True Blue Chelsea tradition, this mug is also strangely defective.

It seeps from the bottom. Always has. Pick it up and there’s a little ring of dampness on the surface left behind.

Votcha gonna do?

My this, my that. Does it matter?

Mugs come and go, part of our lifetime conveyor belt of fading ephemera. Worn out, broken, lost or discarded, we no longer even possess much of what we once felt we owned.

Unless there’s a history or a personal significance to an object, I see no value in owning it.

Ironically, the things that matter most to me are not mine at all. In the eyes of the law – and family members! – everything I have is rightfully mine. Yet I’m only their caretaker. They’ll survive beyond me, in the family.

I’ve a few possessions I care about that aren’t heirlooms. I love my mini sea stack from Omey Island, and the two Neolithic stones I found in a flower bed in my back garden. One is a cutting tool, worked well to a sharp three inch blade, the other either a hand axe.

These are not mine either. I have them, but they belong to the soil, and will doubtless be returned there at some stage.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune..

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