Hello, guys, my name is Colin Myers, and I run a local-based junk removal and waste disposal company in East London. Throughout the years, I’ve shared so many interesting stories with friends and colleagues that they finally convinced me to start a blog about them. I had a hard time choosing which episode to share first, but I think the story I am about to tell you embodies the unexpected nature of my work the best.
The funny thing about waste removal is its dual nature. By necessity, it is related to the past – all the junk people have accumulated and never cared to throw away throughout the years. At the same time, it always looks to the future – people usually call me because they need the space for something else, plan to rent or sell their property, or move away.
My story begins on a busy Wednesday afternoon last spring when I received a quote request from an address in Stepney. The potential customers were selling their 2nd-floor apartment at Coltman Street and needed their section of the basement space cleared for the new owners. They assured me there were no heavy-duty items, but with so many other tasks on their mind, the last thing they wanted to deal with was throwing out cobweb-covered boxes and junk.
It was my favourite type of job – small-scale, easy, and quick. I was hoping to finish it in under one hour because I had a humongous job on Thursday and wanted to have the afternoon off. So I headed to Coltman Street in my minivan, expecting another ordinary clearing. Little did I know that I was about to stumble upon one of the most exciting finds in my career.
I parked my van in front of the 3-storey, brick terraced house after double-checking the address. It was a quiet section of East London, less than a couple hundred yards away from St Dunstan’s. Before I had even come out of the van, the front door opened, and a cheerful woman in her mid-fifties waved me to come in.
“Hello! My name is Julia, we spoke on the phone. You are five minutes early. Would you like a cup of tea before I show you the basement?”
I politely responded that I am more of a coffee guy, which is technically correct. But the fact of the matter was that I didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary. Julia didn’t seem offended at all, and we immediately headed for the basement. She had been accurate in her description on the phone – there was nothing that required more than one person to lift. Two old kids’ bicycles, some decrepit home maintenance tools, an ancient-looking video (Gosh, did I miss those!), and maybe a dozen boxes. Under an hour?! I was going to clear this in fifteen minutes!
I put my gloves on, grabbed my sack truck and went to work. My customer was a talker, which is fine by me – I love communicating with clients. It was a story I had heard before a hundred times. She and her husband had two kids who had gone to college and moved out, and they were suffering from empty-nest syndrome. So, instead of remaining in the now too-big apartment in Stepney, they were moving to a smaller, cosier cottage in rural Surrey.
The junk and boxes were already gone when I noticed something looking out of place. At first, I had thought it was another, older-looking card box, but when I cleared everything else, it turned out to be a small wooden box. However, its front was blackish, as if it had been in some fire before being pulled out at the last moment.
“Oh, that thing belonged to the previous owners. We never got to throw it out – somehow, it didn’t seem right. Maybe we thought they would realise they had left it behind and come looking for it. After a while, we just forgot about it.”
I lifted the box, which proved surprisingly light. There was definitely nothing heavy in it, but the lock had survived whatever calamity it had faced. I always check the contents of such items because the owners might have forgotten something precious inside. Besides, the box provoked my curiosity, and I wanted to find out what was in it.
I took my leave from Julia and headed for my good friend Bryan’s place. Bryan is the best locksmith in East London, and I knew he could open the box in seconds. “Look what the cat dragged!”, he welcomed me with his customary broad smile. “What did you find this time?”
“You tell me”, I said and put the box on the counter.
“Ha, I haven’t seen one of those in ages. My grandma used to own one – it is a box where ladies kept their jewellery and personal letters. It seems this one had a rough time. But the lock is very easy to open, give me a second.”
It barely took even that. Bryan carefully opened the box, which at first seemed a total disappointment. A notebook that could only have been a personal diary and a patch of letters tied with a purple ribbon. But he opened the notebook, and after browsing through a couple of pages, he whistled loudly.
“Lad, this is amazing. It is a personal diary from before the Second World War. The lady who owned it was named Alice, and the first entrance was from 1928 when she was twelve. You have to take this to an antiquarian or a historian, it is worth the effort!”
Fortunately, I had the perfect guy for the job. My schoolmate George was a history buff and a walking encyclopaedia when it came to London. After a quick phone call and describing what I had found, we agreed to meet at The Old Ship – one of our favourite pubs on Barnes Street.
George was hardly listening while I was telling him how I had found the box. He was utterly engrossed in the diary, occasionally mumbling something like “amazing” or “incredible”. He carefully untied the ribbon and began reading the letters. I could almost see the wheels furiously turning in his brain.
“Tell me again, where exactly did you find the box?”
I gave him the address, and he nodded absent-mindedly. “That’s what I thought. The last entrance in the diary is from October 6th, 1940. On October 9th, Stepney was particularly hard-hit during a raid – maybe a dozen bombs hit the area near St Dunstan’s. I believe the box owner, this Alice, might have been one of the casualties – hence the charring you see.”
I stared at George with my mouth agape. “But it gets worse”, George continued. “The letters were from her fiance, who served in the Expeditionary Corps in France in the spring of 1940. The last letter, however, is from his mother, who encloses the telegram from the military, notifying her that her son had died while retreating towards Dunkirk.”
I shook my head in disbelief. You never find such things during a junk removal job! I could not believe my luck and yet felt terribly sad for the tragic story of these two young people we owed so much without even knowing them.
“So what do I do with this?”
“You keep it for now”, said George. “I will get in touch with someone I know who works at the Imperial War Museum. They have a Blitz exposition, and I’m sure he will be more than excited to see this find.”
And indeed, Alice’s letters ended up in the Museum after George and his friend checked her story. It was a fantastic feeling to show them to my kids, knowing I had found them. And it was supposed to be just a regular 30-minute job!