A brand new exercise book! All those fresh, clean, crisp, white pages just waiting to be filled: with new possibilities. At school one of the delights of the new term was the handing out of new books. Full of excitement, I would resolve all over again to fill the pages with neat, beautifully formed letters – my very best handwriting. Unlike my previous book, the covers would stay pristine, the inside full of neat, cleverly written stories, pages of sums (all correct) and lots of red ticks. Halfway down the first page the dream would come apart with my first spelling mistake and crossing out. Never mind, today I’m starting a new one again, so there’s still hope!
A clean slate! Harking back to those days when children sat on stools at high wooden desks, literally writing with sticks of chalk on pieces of grey slate, this phrase is multi-layered, firing our imagination with its multiple meanings and connotations. Visions of Victorian schoolrooms dissolve, giving way to ideas of debts paid, sins forgiven and fresh new starts. “Shall I put it on the slate for you, sir?” probably dates back to a time when shopping credit and the daily pint at my ‘local’ were also recorded on a slate behind the bar or the grocery counter.
For me, my favourite kind of clean slate is a house move! At one and the same time, it gives me the chance to sort through the accumulation of ‘things’, to discard what I no longer want, to pack up my treasures and move on, to clean in all the corners and to start again! I can rearrange the furniture, change the colour schemes, buy new things and do it all differently. It’s a new beginning and a glorious new opportunity. A Dutch friend asked me “in England do you like to do special cleaning in the new year?” ‘Spring cleaning’ she meant. ‘Me – like cleaning?’ I thought. “No” I said, to her amazement. “I like to move house!”
But a new home is also a new phase of life. I can reassess my lifestyle too. I can try new things, meet new people, develop new routines, abandon old ones. We all need a new slate sometimes. I’ve had a lot – I can no longer remember how many houses I have lived in. I love the sense of familiarity that comes with time, but I still get a buzz from that sense of newness and opportunity that beckons to me from the future when it’s time to move on.
A clean slate! Harking back to those days when children sat on stools at high wooden desks, literally writing with sticks of chalk on pieces of grey slate, this phrase is multi-layered, firing our imagination with its multiple meanings and connotations. Visions of Victorian schoolrooms dissolve, giving way to ideas of debts paid, sins forgiven and fresh new starts. “Shall I put it on the slate for you, sir?” probably dates back to a time when shopping credit and the daily pint at my ‘local’ were also recorded on a slate behind the bar or the grocery counter.
For me, my favourite kind of clean slate is a house move! At one and the same time, it gives me the chance to sort through the accumulation of ‘things’, to discard what I no longer want, to pack up my treasures and move on, to clean in all the corners and to start again! I can rearrange the furniture, change the colour schemes, buy new things and do it all differently. It’s a new beginning and a glorious new opportunity. A Dutch friend asked me “in England do you like to do special cleaning in the new year?” ‘Spring cleaning’ she meant. ‘Me – like cleaning?’ I thought. “No” I said, to her amazement. “I like to move house!”
But a new home is also a new phase of life. I can reassess my lifestyle too. I can try new things, meet new people, develop new routines, abandon old ones. We all need a new slate sometimes. I’ve had a lot – I can no longer remember how many houses I have lived in. I love the sense of familiarity that comes with time, but I still get a buzz from that sense of newness and opportunity that beckons to me from the future when it’s time to move on.
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