An unusual design decision
Much as I love our house, it has some unusual design features. One which has been changed for the better, was that when the house was built, it had no back door on the ground floor. At some point (we think in 1970s), one was put in, and although this was done in a bad way (ruining the flow of the staircase in the process), it is hard to see why the decision not to have one was taken in the first place. Perhaps because it was felt that the front door was for the family, and the only people needing the back door would be the servants who were in the basement anyway. Who knows…
But one other peculiar thing that is still a bad feature of the house is that at the front there are railings and below them a garden area on each side. This gives a pleasant view from the basement, but believe it or not, the only way to weed these small gardens is either to climb over the railings from the outside and climb down a very steep slope followed by a six foot drop, or to climb through the basement window. You have to do this not once but twice, because the areas are not connected to each other. This is frankly lunacy. Well I think I mentioned the other day that I have to sit in the back seat of the car because the two men “will not fit”? Well remarkably, the same applies to the basement window – there is no way their vast six foot bulks can be squashed through that tiny gap, whilst my sylph-like figure slips through with no problem. So today I climbed through the windows and weeded the front areas. To get to parts of them I had to climb up the six foot wall I mentioned and then balance on a narrow ledge holding on to the railings. Fun and games but all the weeds are gone now and it all looks quite nice – including the very spectacular azalea you can see in the picture.
One thing I thought about as I climbed in and out of these windows and up and down ladders and lugged huge bags of debris up and down narrow stairs – is that less than two years ago my foot was so bad that I could hardly walk. It is not 100% perfect now but it is a million percent better than it was and I am very grateful for that. I did not think back then that I would ever be able to do the things I did today ever again.
