Things happen in this house.
Sometimes the skylight is open and
the rain comes in. We don’t hear it for we
are sitting in the living room listening to Chopin on the radio.
Or maybe it isn’t raining and there
are guests in the kitchen – passing visitors or some neighbours locked out of
their house – sitting around the dining table, having a cup of tea. But the
children of these visitors are bored and come running into your room because talk
of your children’s book collection has reached the end of the street. Or so you
wish. In reality, you only have a handful of books and the children have all
read them anyway. But you are good at stalling and this skill comes in handy –
there is no way you are missing out on a conversation with a child of about
nine possessing an overarching knowledge of Pippi Longstocking.
Things happen in this house even on
weekends.
At the first acceptable time in the
morning, the coffee machine is turned on and the smell of freshly ground coffee
beans is everywhere. Someone may have baked their bread in the bread machine
overnight and the smell of warm bread is now in competition with the smell of
fresh coffee.
Maybe the day passes in non
consequential bliss – cleaning the conservatory, climbing the tree in the
garden, hanging your laundry.
Soon it is Saturday night and anything
of any consumable delight, chocolates included, is placed on the table, ready
to be assembled with efficiency on to plates on trays, to be taken to the couch
to watch some subtitled crime drama from Scandinavia.
Laziness on Saturdays prepares us,
because on Sundays, things happen outside the house, in the garden, while you
are sipping coffee, eating some ice-cream and plotting an escape to the
seaside. Maybe there is a barbeque and everyone from the street comes or maybe
there is a gathering outside on the street.
Things happen all the time in and
outside this house, but sometimes nothing happens too.
That time when it isn't raining, when
the skylight is closed, and you can’t really remember what day it is anymore. Then
you sit with your feet propped up on your desk, watching the sun set outside
your window and wonder about all the things that happened or will happen in this
house.