Onions, birthdays and hoarding!

It’s my 51st birthday on Friday, and I’ve been reflecting on my life. Some of you will have come to me as clients, and the rest, well I’m so grateful that you spend your precious time reading my blog. I’m always honoured that people share their personal lives and difficulties with me, so in return, I thought I would share some of my history with you.  

As those of you who have read my book know, I grew up in a chaotic home with a very mentally unwell mother. I make light of it most of the time but when I stop and think about it, as my therapist made me do today, it really was quite awful. I feel great pity for my mother now I’m a therapist and can see how her own mental health sadly made her very unhappy. She was absolutely a role model for what not to become.  

However, in that crazy, chaotic life, a few family stories are utterly hilarious. In

honour of my birthday, I’m going to share a family favourite with you… 

My mother was a hoarder all my life. I slept on a ‘floor’ that was about 3 feet deep (yes, you read that correctly) above the true floor level. In fact, until my mother got Dementia when I was an adult, there were floorings in the house I had never ever seen. We couldn’t even access the kitchen, so food was something you picked up and ate (I still like eating with my hands), or it came in a tin. Because of this food was precious.  

One day, when I had (luckily) moved out, I went to visit my mother and was greeted by the most awful smell at the bottom of the path. As I walked closer to the house, I realised it was not in the air but emanating from the house itself. I knocked and waited, retreating to the garden wall where we often sat and chatted given it was by then almost impossible without climbing gear to get inside. I swear it was climbing in and out that kept my mother fit!  

Finally, she appeared with an ‘Oh, it’s you,’ her normal affectionate greeting. She came outside and we sat and watched the cars go by as the sunlight flickered through the lime leaves on the tree in her garden.  

I asked what the smell was, ‘Oh, that’s the onions.’ She said like that was a

completely normal statement. ‘what… onions?’ I asked. She then told me that she had helped out a friend who was a greengrocer by working in her shop, and instead of paying in cash, the friend had asked if she wanted to be paid in food. I presume this was a tax loophole – you can’t really declare employee wages in food on your self-assessment form. My mother, for some reason, decided it would be great to be paid… in onions. I would guess her thinking here was that she would pickle them and have a long-lasting food supply. (as a kid, I remember sitting over whole sacks of onions, peeling them for pickling. I became completely immune to that stinging eye feeling).

‘So why can I smell them from the road?’ I asked. (Note that I skipped over the, why you would choose onions over cash question, this was my mother’s normal

behaviour). ‘Oh, they are rotting.’ She said, like this was not a problem. ‘Why don’t you throw them away then?’ I asked. ‘I tried, they wouldn’t take them.’ She said. 

‘Whose they?’ I asked.’ ‘the rubbish bin men.’ 

‘The rubbish bin men wouldn’t take them…why not?’ I asked, very confused, why this was a problem. I put my rotting vegetables in my green bin, and hey presto, each week, they’re gone.  

At this, she just sighed and said, ‘There’s too many. It made the bin too heavy.’ 

Now, let’s take a pause. If you aren’t in the UK and I know many of your aren’t. I just want to clarify something. I don’t know what it’s like for you, but here in the UK, the bins are collected by a van with a hydraulic lift; they can lift HUGE weights. At this, I silently stood up catching on to there being more to this story. I stood up and walked slowly up the garden path; as I got closer to the now propped-open door, the smell was immense. I held my breath and poked my head around the door (which only opened exactly my mother’s body width due to the hoarding) and literally saw the problem.  

My mother had not just been paid in onions, she’s been given a yearly wage. There was a pile that was 8ft long, 4ft in depth and 4ft high. I am not joking. A WALL of onions…all in a mid-rotting state.  

I took a breath on the return to the wall. Did you think you could pickle them?’ I

simply said, not even bothering to comment on the why/how questions. ‘Yes, but I couldn’t keep up.’ 

I realised that the bin men could have emptied her bin, but they clearly didn’t feel like being the butt of all of Cambridge complaining as they drove all the way through town, wafting onion odour behind them.  

Out of the quiet, she said, ‘The neighbours are complaining.’ ‘why?’ I said. ‘The smell is going through the floorboards and crossing into their house.’ My mother lived in a tall Victorian terrace house. Oh dear, I thought, with an internal sigh to my mother’s long-suffering neighbours. It was now I just started laughing until tears came down my face. My mother, seeing the funny side did too.  

‘Well, let’s put them outside, at least that gets them out of the house.’ I said.  We got up… 

What became of the onions you might ask?  

Well the neighbour eventually put them in his car and drove them to the rubbish tip, something I hadn’t even considered as it hadn’t occurred to me to put rotting onions in my car!  

This is my gift to you for my birthday. I hope it took your mind off whatever work

crisis, kid crisis or life crisis you might be having. I hope it makes you chuckle for the rest of your day and I hope you enjoy a laugh reading it another tired human who needs a distraction from life.  

Have a fantastic week and I’ll be back with my normal writing next week, until then, enjoy your onions!