suitcase (and roses)

It's got to the very final stages of what to keep, and what to let go (but one thing that I'm not letting go of is the tradition of flowers from the garden on the windowsill).  The hardest thing today was my father's old khaki green suitcase, which dates back to 1940 (the date of manufacture is actually there inside) - and there's a very evocative multiply altered change of address label inside the lid.  I remember the suitcase well - it traveled around with us a good deal, and, evidently, was a Work Suitcase for Ray, until he turned to supposedly posher and much nastier ones.  So here's a label for the Athenee Palace, where he spent a lot of time in 1970, working on the contractual side of the hydro-electric dam that the Romanians were building with the UK firm that he worked for (and that they were trying to pay for, unsuccessfully, in tomatoes).  They were a corrupt bunch - I remember my father taking my mother and myself to a dinner at the Savoy (the Baked Alaska! That's what I truly remember!) to help entertain some visiting government negotiators - a dinner during which my mother had the most peculiar expression on her face.  Afterwards, she revealed that the government official, who I think was called Greceanu (she and I subsequently referred to him as Letchy Gretchy) had his hand on her thigh throughout the dinner.  Alas, just a few years ago, Ray was talking to a Romanian Big Issue seller outside Waitrose in New Malden, and found that all the work on the dam has by now been jeopardized by people stealing the metal piping.

And then there were other labels - the suitcase was evidently once shipped by - probably the GNR - to Wimbledon from ... ? Carlisle, for 2/6d, 

on some occasion, Ray evidently and improbably traveled 1st class.

So normally I'd have brought this along.   BUT - having been brought down from the loft, it was horribly evident that all its leather straps and corners are decaying like light and fragile rust, leaving large brown stains on anything they touch.  Not even I can think it's a good idea to hang onto this one.