When a chair is not just a chair

This is my most precious item of furniture. Doesn't look like much, does it? It's a dodgy shade of brown velour (after being reupholstered at some point in the 80s) and it has too many scratches and marks to mention. Looking at it, you're possibly wondering what makes it so precious. Well, sometimes a chair isn't just a chair. Sometimes it's also a symbol: of love, of family, of the journeys people make.

The chair came into my family when it was bought by my grandfather, Theo, for my grandmother, Helen, when she was pregnant with my uncle. It was to be her nursing chair.  That was in 1940s South Africa but the frame is obviously older than that and I think it must have been owned and loved by another family first. What I do know is that my grandpa would have found it at a garage sale or auction. He almost never bought furniture new, always preferring to find something secondhand that he could restore and breathe new life into. When it was reupholstered in the aforementioned brown velour, he did it himself.

After being bought some time in 1941 the chair accompanied my grandparents and their growing family on many moves around South Africa; from Johannesburg to Rustenberg, on to Durban and finally Cape Town. My grandmother nursed five children in it, and they kept it even after their sons and daughter grew up and left home. And this is where the history of my chair becomes entwined with world history.

By the 1970s my grandfather, a charismatic Methodist minister, was the regional director of the anti-apartheid Christian Institute. His outspoken writings and public lectures against apartheid meant he ran afoul of the South African government. He was banned and subject to virtual house arrest, and in 1978 plans were made to smuggle him out of the country so that he could continue his activism in exile. In June 1978 (my granny having come ahead to England using the cover story that she was visiting her daughter, my mum) my grandfather said goodbye to Cape Town and began a journey that involved a chain of cars driven under cover of night, transfers conducted in dusty and silent desert towns, a trip across the Botswanan border in the boot of a sympathetic diplomat's car, and finally a flight to London. He didn't know if he, or my grandmother, would ever see South Africa - and the things they'd left behind - again.

It didn't take long for the authorities to work out that Theo had escaped and soon my uncle was able to start packing up their house. A lot of their possessions went to friends and family in South Africa, but some important pieces were shipped to the UK ready for my grandparents (who by late 1978 had temporarily moved to the Netherlands to work for the Christian Institute office there) to return and settle in England. The chair was amongst the few items of furniture that made the journey from Cape Town to their new home in Birmingham.

Theo & Helen in the early 1990s

The drama of escape over, the chair settled into calm domestic life once again. Theo first got a job teaching at a theological college in Birmingham and then moved to work as parish minister in a Warwickshire village. My memories of the chair are of perching on my granny's knee as she read me bedtime stories. Of my grandpa, older now and exhausted by a life lived in exile, sitting reading letters from friends and colleagues back home.  And when, in 1994, Theo and Helen were finally able to return to a new South Africa (now governed by their friend and comrade Nelson Mandela), the chair stayed behind in Bradford with my mum, where it lived first in her living room and then the conservatory.

When I bought my house five years ago, mum asked if I might want to give the chair a new home. After making seventeen moves in twelve years, I was finally ready to settle and put down roots. I could think of no better piece of furniture to take pride of place in my new home than my granny's old nursing chair.

The chair now lives on the landing after many years in my bedroom. It's getting a bit tired looking and the colour doesn't match anything I own. I've thought about having it reupholstered many times. But sometimes a chair is more than just a chair, and nothing on earth could convince me to change one that holds so many memories.

This is my entry into the British Gas History Of Home competition. It was also a good excuse to write about Theo, one of the most important people in my life. After a long illness Theo died in 2003, aged 82. Helen passed away last year at the age of 91. I wrote about her here.