Around the house

If you saw me walking through my house these days, you’d be excused for thinking that I’d gone religious. Now that’s not to say that I’m aspiritual, but the reason my head is bowed is not one of reverence – it’s purely for self-protection, perhaps even self-preservation.

For some reason, the marchigiani build their doorways low. The permanent bump on my head bears testament to that. With my bowed head approach, I’ve got most of them beaten now, but there are two that catch me like snipers waiting for me to drop my guard, and I do this regularly enough to keep the bump permanently tender. Both of the danger zones involve steps, and they carry out their assaults when I’m going down. The doorway from the bathroom wing to the dressing room is one, while the first step down from the outdoor stairway is the other. In spite of my “going down, head down” mantra, they both enjoy healthy success rates.

“Thud!”, when all’s said and done, is probably the best sound approximation of head meeting doorway. It has a real depth to it, without any hollowness, but with substance, transcending layers. Of course “Thud!” is merely the opener. It’s followed by a barrage of audible reactions, which tend to have something of an “edge” to them, and a skull-penetrating, flashing pain that tends to render everything else that was going on utterly irrelevant.

After the umpteenth head-crunch, recovery – which takes some 5 minutes – is typically followed by an angry and wholly unsavoury reference to the doorways, and an oath to ensure the builder raises them all.

While the doorways have a tendency to impact my sense of touch, there are 3 particular rooms in the house which invoke distinct reactions of another sense – the olfactory one.

First, the kitchen. While it’s very functional, and we’re making do, the encroaching chill has necessitated that we close the windows in there. This has brought out a “character” that we’d rather not have been introduced to. The lingering moisture in the walls has left a musty, dank aroma, prompting the thought: “This can’t be healthy.”

The room next door – the ex-wine pressing and storage room, which shares a wall with the kitchen but no door or other opening – has a similar smell, only thicker and with a hard-to-place “twist” that leaves you wondering: “What did they do in this room?” This is where Julius’ bicycle and the Bowflex get stored, both removed for use.

The third room is the bathroom. Now us first-worlders spend a fair amount of time on scents and aromas and perfumes to make our bathrooms smell distinctly unbathroom-like. This is not the case with us. Walk into ours blindfolded, and you go: "This is a bathroom." No question. Think “public toilet,” and you’ve got it. Now if you know Maria and her hygiene obsession, you’ll appreciate that this is not only demeaning, it’s mood-altering. The uncomfortable whiff is attributable to the manual-flush toilet with its rusted mechanism. We’re planning to replace it soon, not only to eliminate the need for bucket-filling and self-flushing, but also to alleviate the need for breath-holding when we’re in there.

Other than this, however, the periodic ceiling paint deposits, the hayfever-inducing dust, and the incessant buzz and interference of insects, everything’s just fine.