Reflections on the glass
I enjoy the occasional spot of DIY - it revives memories from all those years ago of messing around in my father's workshop in Somerset - increasingly helping me to recreate that second more perfect childhood. Something to which I feel we should all be entitled in exchange for the passage of time. We used to live in a Victorian property - it even had a datestone telling us that the house was built in 1886. It gave me childish thrills even then to make unexpected discoveries. Like original Victorian Christmas cards under the floorboards in the attic, or pulling off the plywood cladding beloved by previous owners to discover a beautiful staircase intact with spindles and oak newel posts, as well as fine panelled doors. Then there was the glass. A quarter-inch thick panel etched with a design showing a sheaf of corn was discovered in the cellar covered in dust and cobwebs and refitted in another door that had been spoilt with that nasty bobbly frosted glass. And a hatch into the attic...