The archive
Every exhibit, without walking the halls.
Search the whole museum by a year, a kind of memory, or a word. Open any artefact to read its card, or step straight to it in the halls.
17 of 17 on display
Love You to the Moon and Back
She said it every night at the door, every night for thirty years. When she was gone we found it written on the back of a shopping list in her handwriting. The moon came to stand for all of it.
The Whale of the Deep
He spent forty years on the water and would not have known what to do with a garden. This is the size of the thing he spoke about, in the hall where the light comes down from the ceiling.
A Letter Never Posted
I wrote it the week after the funeral and could not bring myself to send it to anyone, because there was no one left to send it to. Dear Dad — the shed still smells of you. I have not moved the screws. It has lived in a drawer for eleven years. Here it can be read, which is the only thing it ever wanted.
Two Swans, Forty-One Years
They met at a boating lake in 1963 and never once agreed on whose idea it was. Two swans, because they said swans chose once and then stopped looking.
2001My first ever headshot
17 years old. Fresh faced. Full of dreams. A carefree period in life.
Vows, 12 June 1971
Handwritten on the back of the order of service because the good paper had run out. Forty-nine years later he read the same words again at her bedside.
Grade Papers, 1962
She taught the same class for thirty-one years and kept every end-of-term report she ever wrote, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. This one is the last of them.
Dad's First Car
A blue saloon bought for forty pounds in 1974. He drove it until the floor came away. On Sundays he washed it in his vest, and we were not allowed to help.
The Snowman of 1987
The only year the pond froze hard enough. He built it taller than himself and put his own scarf on it, and cried when it went in the thaw.
Nan's Patchwork
Made from the shirts of four brothers who did not all come home, and the dress she wore the summer before she married. She quilted at the kitchen table with the radio on, and never once called it art.
The Dog Who Waited
Every day at ten past four he was at the gate, whether or not anyone was coming home. He waited longest of all of us.
Grandad's Watch
Wound every morning at seven, by hand, for sixty years. It has not been wound since March. It still says the right time twice a day and we have not the heart to correct it.
The Gramophone in the Corner
The front room was for guests and the gramophone was for the front room, which meant it was for nobody. Once a year at Christmas it played a record so scratched the tune had to be remembered into place.
First Steps, Filmed
Eighteen seconds of a kitchen floor, a wobble, and a room full of people cheering. He is twenty-nine now and does not believe the film is real.
The Eagle Over the Door
It hung over the door of the workshop for fifty years and nobody knows who put it there. When the building came down, I went back with a ladder.
Our Song, on the Old Radio
Recorded off the radio in 1984 onto a cassette, badly, with the kettle going in the background. Played at every anniversary since. The kettle is part of the song now.
A Poem for the Kitchen Table
Written on the back of an envelope in biro, while the potatoes boiled. Nothing in this house was ever still: the clock, the kettle, the children, the dog. I did not want it still. I only wanted to write it down before it moved.