Tarts and gay gobbles

I spent much of today down in Loughborough helping take stock of the Gould Theatre Collection, the life accumulations of Mervyn Stockbridge Gould, raconteur extrordinaire and keeper of the Schnorbitz.

I expected to find myself getting rather maudlin as he was a very close friend and sadly missed. Surprisingly enough, I found the experience therapeutic and as the afternoon wore on, I kept discovering things from my own collection that I had forgotten I had given him.

There is a lot of stuff but fortunately not quite as much as I had been dreading. The sad bit is that much of the stories behind the ephemera have died with him. He told me a fair bit about some of the items, but I cannot be sure with the passage of time where they were saved from.

I have collected up a number of books (10 ASDA sackfuls!) that I immediately recognise. Some is duplicated and some I have already, so I can see that I will be able to sell some things on to other collectors. It has only made a small dent in the bookshelves!

The harder part comes with the filing cabinets of original research he has accumulated over the decades about our cinema and theatre heritage.  If I lived in a big house by myself I would have no worries about shifting it all lock stock and barrel to spend the rest of my life cherishing it. Unfortunately, however, life isn’t like that. Our spare room is already almost impassible with fifteen years of accumulated stuff that needs to be found another home.  I can’t really keep the collection together but what I can do is make sure it ends up with organisations that will make good use of it and keep it accessible.

One thing that I recovered today that wasn’t a book was a framed poster. It was the invitation to Mervyn’s celebration party from fifteen years ago when he took early retirement from the University. It is a little bitter-sweet for me because I wasn’t able to attend for some reason despite wanting to very much (I don’t remember why now, probably work related).  It was written in the style of a Victorian theatrical poster and one holds pride of place in the bar of the Pub where it happened.

It is held in the frame with gummed brown paper so it is a simple photo and not too sharp, no doubt I will find another loose one in due course as we clear up more stuff from the collection.