dual personalities

What with the World Cup soccer final, attic cleaning, and son #1 moving to Syracuse we’re going to be busy this weekend. My house is a shambles, but that is to be expected.

Although it’s difficult to tell from the weirdly blurry photos, the DH’s herculean efforts in the attic are beginning to pay off. There’s now one nearly empty corner.

The rest still looks like this.

I am thoroughly enjoying the attic clean-out. We’re finding all sorts of forgotten treasures. I’ve always loved attics and used to dream about them a lot as a child. I guess our house just felt big to me then. When I first read Mervyn Peake’s attic description in Gormenghast it was if I were reading about one of my own dreams.

This room was the darkest. In the summer the light seemed to penetrate through the fissures in the warped wood and through the dislodged portions of stone slating in a less direct way than was the case in the larger room or gallery to its right. The third, the smallest attic, with its steps leading upwards from the gallery with the banistered verandah was the best lit, for it boasted a window with shutters which, when opened, gave upon a panorama of roof-tops, towers and battlements that lay in a great half-circle below, a portion of the quadrangle where-in, were a figure to move across, he would appear no taller than a thimble.

Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened her-self she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a broken toy lion that must one day have been the plaything of one of Fuchsia’s ancestors, spread from every wall until only an avenue was left to the adjacent room. This high, narrow avenue wound down the centre of the first attic before suddenly turning at a sharp angle to the right. The fact that this room was filled with lumber did not mean that she ignored it and used it only as a place of transit. Oh no, for it was here that many long afternoons had been spent as she crawled deep into the recesses and found for herself many a strange cavern among the incongruous relics of the past. She knew of ways through the centre of what appeared to be hills of furniture, boxes, musical instruments and toys, kites, pictures, bamboo armour and helmets, flags and relics of every kind, as an Indian knows his green and secret trail. Within reach of her hand the hide and head of a skinned baboon hung dustily over a broken drum that rose above the dim ranges of this attic medley. Huge and impregnable they looked in the warm still half-light, but Fuchsia, had she wished to, could have disappeared awkwardly but very suddenly into these fantastic mountains, reached their centre and lain down upon an ancient couch with a picture book at her elbow and been entirely lost to view within a few moments… She descended the steps. There was a ripping away of clouds; a sky, a desert, a forsaken shore spread through her.

That’s why I love both attics and Mervyn Peake! You can read more here.

Well, I’ve got to run — not to the attic but to watch England play Belgium for third place in the World Cup. If you follow such things, you will know that England lost to Croatia in the semis, so Croatia will play France in the final. I hope Croatia wins, but I don’t really care at this point. They’re definitely the underdog. I also hope that England’s captain, Harry Kane, scores today and wins the coveted Golden Boot (did I just jinx him?).

So far, he has 6 goals — more than anyone else in the tournament. Still, you never know how things will turn out. Better just watch and see…

*Mervyn Peake Gormenghast