Packing it up

It’s been quite interesting packing up mum’s home. She was a smoker, and the walls of the rooms where she spent most of her time have a deeper tinge of yellow than say, the bathroom.
Yesterday I took down the cuckoo clock. A gift to my dad on my return from a ‘Today’s Tuesday it must be Belgium’ Contiki Tour. It clanged and donged at me as I got entwined in its chains.
Mum got tired of it years ago when the cats kept getting tangled in the pine cones, so it’s hung quietly in her lounge ever since. It looks much the same as way back when, except the numerals are now a rather interesting shade of yellow.

In memory of both my folks, I put it up in my kitchen, pulled on the pine cones and moved the hands, remembering to allow the cuckoo to finish before moving on to the next half hour.
It was great to see the little door open and the cuckoo popping out. I enjoyed hearing the whirr of the mechanism as the bird prepared to give voice for the first time in years.
I counted each ‘cuckoo’ to make sure it was in sync with the hands. After 42 of them, I realised there was a problem. The poor thing has been breathing second-hand smoke for over a decade, and his insides are all gummed up. So I’ve put him out to pasture and renamed him the cucough clock.