A Roof and Four Walls

I moved out of my house.

I don't know how long it's been now, but it's been a while.

The move hasn't really had that big an effect on me, but the things I've found that are hard to ignore are the memories I've still held from the 13 years i spent there. My entire conscious childhood, actually. It's a pretty big thought to think 49a Douglas Haig St was the place that built the "adult" that I am now, that was the nucleus of my home life.

There's a whole host of memories attached to the place, and stories that can come from everything, but a choice selection I've decided on exhibiting in narrative form on visual stimuli.

I'll include a caption for some pictures, basically.

This is the dusty, moist, dark, musty, semi-underground, illegal-to-live-in-due-to-its-incredibly-low-ceiling study-cum-bedroom "dungeon" that my brother first owned, before passing onto my sister, who in turn she passed onto me. The damp and dusty environment I'm sure contributed to many a sickness, but this room was cherished by the owner and treated with reverence by its heirs.

This is the rumpus room, which invariably was never empty. Home to my sister at various times, myself, visitors; in its later years used simply as a rumpus room. Just outside the doors, my sister would sit and smoke and talk on the phone at any hour of the night. Many times I would accompany her and sit quietly, while she voiced her angsts, not quite understanding it all.

This is the little bridge over our garden. This is where, our younger years, my sister and I would rig up my tricycle with a towel in the back bucket, and we'd ride tandem down the slope, annoying my mother while greatly enjoying ourselves.

The bridge leads to the carport, and onto the street, the forum and meeting place for the residents of Lower Douglas Haig.

This is the upstairs hallway. Host to many an indoor cricket and rugby game with Morgan, its high-powered halogen lamps made play possible at any time of night or day. Yes, it is extremely narrow, but we compromised.

This is my backyard.

This is the grass my father could never get to grow; this is the Taiwanese Cherry tree family and visitors alike marvelled at once a year, with its bright pink flowers.

This is the pool, the centre of many summers.

This is Bowser's domain, where he lay in the sun, and hunted for possums, with occasional success;

This is the huge towering gum tree, over which I pondered many a time when it would fall over and die, pulled out of its lofty home in the skies by wind, or old age. It never did. It outlasted us. It'll probably outlast me.

But it won't outlast my memories.