Wind Hole, Wind Ho, Window

A True Wind Hole on the Terrace of the Scottish National Museum Roof 

In Edinburgh in a shop, I read the origin of the word window.  Wind hole.  The wind on the night that we arrived in Edinburgh was so ferocious that pedestrians passing the window of our cafe were blown into each other's arms - their umbrellas all useless inside out.

The first abodes in this part of the world, hovels with only wind holes in the roof for light, must have been most unpleasant places.  When windows were first placed in walls they were covered with cloth, wood or hammered horn to block the gusty drafts.  The horn and for the wealthy very thin marble let in some light.  It was only in the 17th century that glass was finally invented.  

Wind eye.  A variation on the origin of  the word window is wind eye.  Traveling in the UK one becomes accurately aware of windows and the significance for early inhabitants.  Wind eyes were essential for spotting the enemy.  In castles and early homes the windows seem so tiny and strongly protected.

As we would walk to and from our flat in Edinburgh, we would pass a house that seemed to be guarding the Dean Bridge.  One ancient window with eyeballs in the panes would catch my attention.  Touring England and Scotland, I felt ridiculously obsessed with windows.     

With a countrywide stock of old structures - three, four or more centuries old, the variation of window styles and panes is impressive.  For instance, we visited the Traquair Castle near Peebles, Scotland.  It is the oldest continuously inhabited house in Scotland - 900 years worth.  From an upper floor, the window gave this very wavy view of the garden maze.  At one time most of the house must have had this glass.  

Think of the word shut-eye.  Closing the wind eye for the night meant closing the shutters.  Shut her.  I  am fascinated that words transform themselves - shove together until they have become a thing instead of an action.  In our Georgian flat there were eleven-foot tall shutters.  They folded into cupboards on either side of the windows.  At night my sister liked to shut-out the light.  I liked to keep them ajar to let-in morning light.  We compromised on shuttering, one side closed and one side cracked open.

In the old houses with the low ceilings and dark floors, any window drew me towards the light and as a writer I kept an eye out for good places to write or read.

When there weren't shutters, there were shades or drapes.  Houses were thought of as bodies, hence draping one's windows was like draping one's body - warding off unwanted glances.  I noticed a penchant for warm colored drapes making the cold rooms more inviting.

Shades.  When one pulls a shade, one gets shade.  The word made me think of houses with shady reputations. Were they the ones that shades were pulled down to avoid scrutiny?  Surely that is likely. The lovely shade below was not at such a house.  It is in the parlor of Beatrix Potter's house Hilltop in the Lake District.

I saw one window that needed no shades or drapery.  The dirt on it sufficed!

I shall miss spying interesting windows when I return from my trip.  Reason to come back to England and Scotland!

My sister just mentioned stained glass. One more variation!  A ship carrying souls to the other world in the Christ Church in Oxford.

Oops.  One more.  A display in a shop window in Oxford.  The word display was used to mean exhibition beginning in the 1500's.  Here is an exhibition of puppets.

Most Favorite Photos of England (So Far)

The Curious and Most Curious Sightings in London

London is a town for the curious.  Even the youngest engage intensely with this immense metropolis.  We have not actually seen many children - most gaze from prams or are heading to school in their shorts and sturdy shoes, but those who were out-and-about we observed playing with joyful and intent concentration.  The girl above seemed like she was in a glass case herself.  In the Victorian and Albert Museum she read quietly about the maker of that extraordinary piece of glass.

 The child below was sitting on the edge of the fountain in the same museum.  I've spotted others throwing leaves, sliding down banisters and chasing birds.  Or chattering away with excitement standing on the edge of curbs - buses and black taxis swishing by their toes.  

Mostly one wanders in crowds.  Even late at night, the little alleyways in Soho or Convent Garden are jammed with jostlers.  Rarely are the streets entirely empty.  Likewise the museums.  I caught this photo of my sister looking down into a gallery, where artifacts are examined, cleaned and repaired.  I had to wait between people ambling by to take this photo.  Imagine this space with only whispers and the quiet clack of heels.    

 I loved seeing the lady below.  She is my most curious of sightings.  I so admire her courage to wear these colors!

 And this man his chartreuse pants!

Most curious?  All of those tourists taking photos!  And shame on them.  Taking selfies here in the Shard's elegant restaurant.

Signage

I am visiting England for my daughter's graduation from Oxford Brookes Architectural Studies.  One morning we gathered in a tiny coffee shop on Cowley Road and on the wall was this little sign.  The author, Saul Leiter was an American photographer.  I think, that had he been wandering with me in England, he would have been taking photos of signs.  The British have a most unique manner of signage, which to me, indicates a different philosophy than that of Americans.

Take the sign "Way Out".  When I see it, I feel like I having been wandering a deep woods and through my own skill and capacity have finally found a path out.  I feel capable and excited.  The American version of this sign - Exit - feels more like a command and it doesn't make me feel the least bit competent.  Likewise, the British sign "Help Point" graciously acknowledges that I may be at a loss - a very human condition, whereas - Information - implies that there is data available.
    

 And then there is the humor.  British humor.  Can this be on purpose?  According to the sign below is the toilet really disabled?  And do the parents haul around baby changing facilities?  Only some parents or all parents?

"NO! At any time."  What does the sign below mean?  The British again seem to leave the interpretation up to me.  I feel in control.  I love it.

I shall be careful with my bills.

The British are watching to see what I think of their philosophy of gracious signage.

Dream House

I dream of houses with undiscovered rooms.

I dream of a ranch house with a back door that opens into an unexpected series of rooms like those in a shotgun house, one room leading to another in a straight line stretching out across the backyard and then oddly over the property line shouldering aside the neighbor’s shed and mysteriously continuing on, one room after another straight over streets and even through other suburban ranchers.  I dream each room is bare of furniture and the floors are covered with linoleum.  I never find the end of that straight stretch of rooms in a ranch house, even though I have dreamed of it over many years. 

The Victorian-styled house of my dreams has only one undiscovered room.  This room is an octagonal one on the second floor.  Its discovery quite delighted me in my dream and I recall trying to figure out how its existence could have been concealed from me. The answer of the room’s location went unresolved (dreams have architecturally imprecise plans).  Returning to the octagonal room on another night, I decided that it could be my writing room.

However, my favorite set of imaginary rooms is on the third floor of a white Colonial house, which is set amid trees on a pleasant corner lot.  These rooms are furnished – a suite of them – with white curtains blowing in a breeze in the bedroom.  They wave to the white coverlet, its folds tossed aside as if someone just arose from the unmade bed.  The rooms speak of morning, of slippers shuffling across the Persian rugs, and of pleasure – the shelves lined with books (only good and worthy books).  The layout leads one in a circle through the rooms – each with large windows through which are the tops of trees in summer leaf.  There is no bathroom, but once I found a door leading to what appeared to be a maid’s laundry room.  In the opposite wall from the entrance to the room, there was a small exterior door with a window in it.  In my dream, both stooping and stepping up, I came out onto a tiny roof porch.  Sitting in the low striped cloth beach chair that I found there, I could hear the sound of children’s laughter as they played ball below me, unaware of my presence high above them.

I don’t know what to make of these dreams.  But last week, when an appraiser arrived at my doorstep, intending to assess the value of my very real 1904 Queen Anne house, she entered with a clipboard in one hand and my real estate sale flyer fluttering in the other.  She was flustered having arrived two hours late (a family emergency) but smiling as if presented with some delicious house puzzle.  She startled me with her introductory words.

“I couldn’t make sense of your real estate flyer – too many rooms.  I couldn’t place where they all might be.”  She waved the flyer in front of me with its colored photos depicting the house, the yard, the living room and the huge long kitchen and dining room.  The flyer read, “5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms”.  For a flitting moment, I was afraid that, as if dreaming, I had made up its inexplicable claims of lots of rooms and then the appraisal would come in too low for the new buyers to get a loan.  Waving towards the house next door, she said, “I appraised that house a couple of years ago and from the street, yours looks to be about the same size, but that house has only two bedrooms.”

From where she stood inside my front door, she could see through the kitchen doorway to the big glass-fronted mercantile cabinets hanging high up on the wall and the schoolhouse style fixtures dangling from an unseen ceiling – both speaking of a generous room.  She listed in its direction as the location from which to begin unraveling the mystery of the diminutive house with the big claims.

Once upon a time, this was a modest house with an outhouse, a stable and an unfinished attic.  It had two exterior back porches – one on either side of the thirteen-foot-by-thirteen-foot square kitchen.  (I know this from the public library’s fireman reference book.  Before the book’s retirement, it would be scooped up by the firemen on their way to an emergency in order to determine the layout of the house on fire.)  Eventually, a bathroom with a flush toilet and a laundry room were constructed on the footprint of one of the back porches.  The laundry room’s rough ceiling boards acquired a painted cardboard-like covering.  I removed the cardboard with a steamer a couple of years ago and white washed the boards.

By the fifties, the other porch was enclosed in order to make an eating area and Olin, the previous owner, installed its big corner windows and then he expanded the space by moving a wall inwards.  Gary and I remodeled the kitchen once again, pulling out the drop ceilings, removing an awkward mid-century wall and making a wide welcoming room.  When it was first completed one of my friends, Anne Weatherill, came by to see the completed work and as she stepped into the space, she actually lost her balance as if a huge chasm had opened up and surprised she almost fell in.

The appraiser peered in and up.  She stepped in gazing about.  I explained how I had spotted the kitchen’s cabinets in a field and yelled at Gary, “Stop!  There are my kitchen cabinets.”  They were originally mercantile cabinets from North Powder, Oregon.  They took two years to strip using dental tools removing all of the white paint lodged between the bead board cracks.  Now they were mounted on the wall, refinished with a deep dark brown stain.  The appraiser stepped around the center island counter and pulled out the striped cutting boards admiring the workmanship.

Room by room, we walked.  Me telling the tales of how rooms appeared in the attic.  How 1895 newel posts now stood at the foot of a stairway that didn’t exist fifteen years ago and how new dormers elbowed their way into the roof structure.  

When I showed her a photo of the downstairs bathroom, which once resembled a mobile home windowless room and now was transformed into a light-filled space, she said, “Let’s sit on the couch and look at the photos.” 

When I dream of houses, I wander them alone.  I found it pleasing to guide someone through my real rooms – one surprising space after another.  Finally, we walked the yard and as we stood in the shop/garage with its wide back door open to the shady stream area, she noticed the opening and said, “You have a stream.”  I have always thought of this outdoor space as another “room”.  The willow arching overhead like a ceiling, the hammock like a bed and the metal table and chairs the dining room.  The stream is the cat’s drinking bowl.  Yes, yet another room.

Finally, preparing to leave, the appraiser said, “One would not know what is here from the road.  The rooms and this yard.”  

I think now that I should have titled the real estate flyer:  Dream House.