For some explicable reason, my loft is not as big as the foot print of my house. I cannot work out why. I went up again today and it just doesn’t add up.
FB led me to believe that we had two lofts and that is why it was smaller. However I proved today that this isn’t the case. More on that later.
My reason for venturing into the dark, dusty, tinfoil lined black hole of a storage space? Putting the Chrissy Decs ™️ up there of course. FB could have done this but I was feeling brave, so off I trotted up the steel staircase to dusty heaven. I was in the loft for about thirty minutes which was 25 minutes longer than I wanted to be up there if I am completely honest.
I actually got the CDs put away pretty quickly. My method was foolproof, I pulled the boxes the few inches from Ben and pulled them *just* away far enough from the hatch so that we can climb in to retrieve them next year. Isn’t that what everyone does? And then, over the years, the things you don’t need get pushed farther and farther away, and more and more distant in our memories.
No, the reason for being up there much longer than I had hoped was threefold. Something that you should know about me is that I am fuelled by nostalgia and memories. When I was younger, in the days of MySpace, I was the cool cat with the camera, insisting on quirkily named Facebook albums (eg: It Was A Graveyard Smash [Halloween 2009], Fizz Whizz Schwing [Summer 2010] – you get the jist). I also insisted on printing out all photos to painstakingly blue tac on my wall in some sort of orderly grid, This was on the cusp of digital, there had to be a place for the photos to go once the memory card was full and for me, that was printed and put in a curver box.
You can see where this was going, yes?
A curver box with approx 700 photos had somehow been upended in the loft, and they were perilously beneath out ancient water tank that at the moment we are having to rely on (another story for another day). Years and years of memories such as a school ski trip, a birthday tea without parents at Tiggis and the last day of high school were all bundled together and mixed up and I could see what was going to happen.
I asked Ben to grab me a bag for life and I shoved them all in there to deal with them another day (when I have replaced the strip light in the loft essentially). I am so grateful to my past self for writing names and dates on the photos too so I can remember who was so important that I used a film camera on them!
The next thing to share was actually the last thing that happened but it makes more sense to share it now. Ben could see that I was getting into these photos and he went off to finish the Christmas clear up. I was very restrained and as I mentioned wanted to look when I had light and something warmer than pyjamas on.
Problem with pyjamas is that they don’t often have pockets, so I didn’t have my phone on me. And FB was down in the kitchen, diagonally 2 floors beneath me. I tried to phone him using my Apple watch but that didn’t work. So I had to hook my feet around a support, lean out and scream as loud as I could.
Up Ben came running with as much haste as he could muster. Of course I was fine, but he didn’t know that. I wanted him to be out of breath for the audacity of leaving me in the land of tinfoil where the stability of the floor is questionable at best! Did I need him to get out? No. However did I trust that the ladders would hold me? Also no. So it was a necessity that I was in true Zoë fashion far to dramatic about.
Ben told me before I wiggled my bum down the ladder that he needed a wee. So off he trotted. I looked around the attic and saw a chink of light.
That whole thing about Ben telling me we had two loft spaces? That was because when it gets really cold we have to open the hatch in the bathroom. The hatch where this chink of light was coming from.
I got down on my stomach and slithered over to the hatch like the snake that I really am if I am honest. I waited, and when Ben was mid stream I lifted up the hatch and in my best Ainsley Harriott voice I shouted WHY HELLOOOO JILL!! Then collapsed in giggles (as far as you can collapse when you’re already lying on your stomach).
Ben? Didn’t even flinch. That’s how non plussed he is by my shit antics.
I WILL find out where the rest of my loft is though. It’s very very confusing.