Imagine a house
(1) Walk around and look at it from the front. The sun is shining and since the house faces south the whole front of the house is lit up in the sunshine. You see the red geraniums istin clay pots outside the front door. The front itself is painted a glorious mediteranean blue and has a multi-panelled glass insert, highlighted with tiny etched stars. There's a brass door knocker in shape of a hand, a brass letterbox.and the numbers '82' are picked out in Roman brass letters. Outside the front door is a hard-wearing seagrass welcome mat to rub mud off before entering the house. There's a window to the left, hung with attractive and expensive looking curtains. To the right is a large picture window that juts out over the small, but well kept front garden. The curtains are drawn, but on the windowsill are more pots and tubs containing crocuses, and newly opened daffodils. There is no garden gate, just a series of steps leading up to the door. The whole appearance is of a well kept and welcoming home.
(2) The back of the house faces front, there is less light here, and the height of the fences on either side cast the small narrow garden into shade. You enter from a litter strewn back lane, through a broken and peeling wooden gate, to a concrete back garden that is long and slim. Some tubs of flowers haphazardly placed by the back door. The paths have been swept and there is a disability rail running up the 3 stpes that lead to the backdoor. A metal garden table with 2 metal chairs sits in a small patch of sunlight. On the table is a huge ashtray filled with cigarette butts and a stack of old newspapers. The backdoor is also painted mediteranean blue, but is in need of a second coat. There are, surprisingly, two bells on the door, each with different numbers and names. The nearside window has a lace curtain, the far side window has a crack. A radio can be heard in the background., tuned to radio 4. A linen horse sits outside the backdoor, over which an assortment of laundry is drying - what looks like undergarments for a large, elderly woman.
(3) From the right side of the house the property ends with a tall wodden fence atop which sits some cruel looking barbed wire. Graffitti has been erased from the fence. There's a side gate with a padlock. Above the fence the upper bend has girly-pink curtains, and the sound of teenage laughter drifts down from it. On this windowsill sits a glossy white cat, cleaning her ears.
(4) From the left side of the house a long narrow alley way, barely wide enough to fit a human form. This runs the length of the house. Along the wall is an immaculate row of 19th century hooks from which is suspended an astonishing assortment of household items- ladders, bikes, wheelbarrows, skateboards, broken microwave, glass, wood, rope, sacks, bricks, piles of rubble, fragments of a wendy house, storage bags, stacks of gardening pots & equipment, a rotary linen line, and assorted rusting and new tools. A makeshift shelter made of plastic is suspended above this alleyway to keep the items dry.
(5) A birds-eye view from above shows a newly repaired roof, devoid of weeds, swept clean and well cared for. despite this, a blackbird has made an early spring next at the farthest edge of the front gutter and is busy building up its fortifications. In the centre, next to 3 Victorian chimney pots, and from the pot that arises from the back of the house, a little puff of smoke erupts. Towards the front of the roof stands a small forest of anetennae, 2 sky dishes and assorted cable connections.
(6) From the cellar, looking up towards the underside of the house all is dark, dank, noisy and cramped. The cellar use to house coal, and is a narrow torture chamber, reeking of mould, gloom and neglect. Bare brick walls are moist and cold. The roof of the cellar is barely 5' high, and above the ground floor of the house is porous - soft silt drops down through the floor as feet tread, walk, run back and forth, including the clickety clack heels of a woman and the tick tack toe of a dog.
IF you were to take just ONE view of this house - what would be your overall impression? The house, in this analogy, is a complex multi-dimensional dwelling which can only be understood or 'seen' from multiply (or 6) different perspectives.
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