Our house faces east-south-east, so that as the sun's journey starts to swing further north (yes, yes, I do know that it's us moving, not the sun...) the strength and angle of illumination into our rooms increases: front bedroom, bathroom and living room in the morning, back bedrooms and kitchen in the afternoon. It's around this time of year that the novelty of the shapes made by the sunlight on our walls has me constantly reaching for a camera or my phone.
In the picture above I was surprised by that little prefiguration of the swifts that will be arriving in about a month that appeared briefly one afternoon in the kitchen. You have to be quick, though: less than a minute later and such tricks of the light have gone. That faint shadow of a seagull in the picture below (just beneath the picture-rail), for example, is the projection of a sticker on the front bedroom bay window. I saw it, rushed downstairs to get my phone but it was already fading by the time I got back.
If the rooms look a little bare, that's because Adam, the Polish painter-decorator, has been back to finish off some more work for us. Those tiled fireplaces in the bedrooms are an original "feature" that no doubt some future occupant will have removed: the actual grates had already been taken out before we bought the place and – attractive as they are, in an ugly 1930s sort of way – they're now just a source of draughts and the occasional dead pigeon. Hence the duct-taped sheets of card... I dread to think what may lie behind them after all the years they've been in place.
The best sun-trap is the bathroom, though, with its smaller leaded window, blind, and washing lines stretched over the bath-tub. I could probably fill a book with all the pictures I've taken in there on sunny mornings over the past thirty-eight years, although it would be pretty repetitive, and pictures of "smalls", hung out to dry and back-illuminated, is not everybody's idea of a photo-project. Which, I suppose, is exactly why it might be worth doing.
Phew, says Rembrandt. Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?
2 comments:
Not to nag or anything, but couldn't your decorator come up with something more attractive than cardboard duct taped to the tile to cover your fireplace? I shudder to think about the residue the tape has left after all these years.
Well, even I could come up with something better (and have, downstairs) but it's a classic case of the temporary expedient becoming the permanent solution. Besides, we're sort of attached to the "student squat" look of our youthful years: it's the ultimate labour-saving approach to housework and interior design. Needless to say, both of our children are now rather house-proud in their own homes...
Mike
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