I’m very sorry to start with a rude word. If you are a collector (meaning miniaturist because there are not many ways of being the one without being the other) the thought of downscaling sometimes makes you breathe all funny.
Some of the dust improved round here when the open plan staircase was exchanged for a nice pine staircase with the underside filled in. The open plan staircase nearly stopped me buying this house, 39 years ago.
When I was a child one dreaded feature of the year was the visit to the school outfitters, for many reasons. School uniform was a tweed coat in such a dreadful shade of grey, other schools on the bus used to call us: the elephants. The elephant hide was extremely absorbent, in the rain you could gain a couple of pounds just walking home. Between that and my dreadful Inner Raise shoes for my flat feet, which weighed a ton, I could actually feel myself getting shorter as the day wore on. I know we all do, but in my case it was so noticeable, if I’d lived further away from the bus stop I’d have arrived home on my knees.
There was not a garment in the uniform which was not tickly, scratchy or heavy. For someone so titchy I had good posture, I had been told to imagine I was walking around with a pile of books on my head, but mostly I was just trying to stand in the middle of my clothes.
Additionally to all this expensive misery was the location of the children’s section in a posh outfitters. It was up a massive flight of open plan stairs. Very 1950s, utterly terrifying for someone small, with undiagnosed vertigo, convinced I would plunge earthwards through the slots at every step.
And then there was the horror at the top of being pushed and pulled around, being forced to get changed just in the middle of the carpet, with my liberty bodice and vast grey school knickers on show for all to see as the snobby assistant sneered at my shortness and tried to persuade my mother to buy whatever size they had in surplus quantities.
So I nearly didn’t buy this house when I saw the staircase, I did not like it at all.
The cats, however, loved it. For them it was like a carpeted tree with nice regular branches.
That you could lean through to swipe the feather duster. Such a good game. Here is dear little Cleo playing the game.
She loved the stairs and she loved the big dolls’ house underneath. She fitted in it perfectly.
Today I have not been gardening as planned, I’ve been having a clear out. For a collector the urge to have a clear out is so infrequent, I’m wondering whether I’m coming down with something.
I have been trying to clear a space under the stairs for the big box that contains the items in the shop. It has to be a goodly sized space if I’m going to get the big dolls into it. Something had to go.
For a few aeons the dolls house furniture has been in a huge laundry basket next to the house. This is awaiting the installation of new electric lights. The new battery lights are so much better than the old trailing wires. The grandchildren wanted to play with the house but I wouldn’t let them because the wired lights had a habit of descending unexpectedly and I didn’t think that was safe. A couple of summers ago the GDS helped me remove the old wiring and that was as far as I got.
The house has a back panel missing. Given the age of the house it could well have been missing for a hundred years. I think it was probably hinged to allow any dolls who had got stuck on the return of the staircase to be rescued. I bought the house with no back panel and used the gap to track wires up to the sub- station in the loft where all the little plugs were plugged into a bar of sockets.
The OH has sort of agreed to make me a new back panel, once he has his shed back together again. (The floor has collapsed and the tools are all over the house, waiting.) So there is no point in putting the furniture back in the dolls’ house until there is a back panel.
Today I have been rescuing the furniture from the laundry basket, to put in the Chinese box which is full of unpublished novels and material for dresses I never got round to making and the brown and yellow Doctor Who scarf I have been knitting since the mid sixties. I hate knitting but believe women should possess this skill. Every five years I retrieve the scarf, knit two rows and, once I’m ready to stab any innocent passer-by with the long stupid plastic needles, put it all away in the box.
I can’t now, I’ve emptied the box.
And I will put all the furniture in it once I have stopped being sad that it is all covered in Cleo’s fur.
The antidote to sadness is always writing, hence this.
Meanwhile, have you had a go at the tiny dolls made with a bead, some thread, a bit of ribbon and some carpet fluff (cat fur would be lovely)? Anne in Ballynahinch has had a go. Look at these:
Brilliant!
If you have achieved a small miracle, send me a photo and we’ll all have a look.
Right! Back to cleaning the cat fur off the carpet. (I had forgotten I had needlepointed an entire twelfth scale carpet.) I also discovered that I’d put a working musical box in a grand piano. As you do, well, miniaturists do.
I’d better go there is a crunchy noise downstairs as the OH makes his way not carefully over the little furniture.
Non-miniaturists eh?
Just get busy, they go away eventually.
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