The Funny Little Bungalow has decided to get ahead of the impending nuclear war, and has turned into a wreck overnight. The state it is currently in supersedes all the other demolition, and takes the poor building to a whole new level of desecration. It is a sight to behold.
Picture this: a thirties bungalow, with a sixties extension tacked on the back. Now imagine that the sixties extension has finally been made to answer for its lack of architectural beauty, and has been targeted by the Aesthetics Police with force, rendering it roofless and wrecked in one fell swoop. And there you have it! The Funny Little Bungalow is broken. More so than ever before.
There are bricks and pieces of wood everywhere. Rubble is piled high. There’s a deep hole in the middle of the floor
Luckily, the weather forecast for this coming week is good, and whilst there is nothing much left inside the bungalow’s shell to spoil, rain would make for an interesting, quagmire-ish effect all over the Bakelite tiles.
This is, I tell myself, the turning point. Surely, it can only improve from here on in..?
There are positives to the current state, however:
– The barrier that has so far blocked me from seeing my lovely garden from the hub of the house is gone. I now have a view from my kitchen, even if my kitchen has no roof.
– The damp walls that have plagued us for three winters are now so broken, that damp is the least of our worries.
– The space is rather impressive. Ignoring the mudslick on the floor (the weather forecast lied), I can see what the room will look like, sort of, when it is completed.
An added bonus was the old newspaper clipping we found stuffed in a part of the ceiling. Dated 15th August 1963, the headline refers to the Great Train Robbery, which must have been the story of the time. “TRAIN GANG ARRESTS IMMINENT”, reads the title, followed by “60 MAIL BAGS FOUND AT HIDE-OUT”. I must admit, I got rather excited reading this – it was almost as if the Funny Little Bungalow was trying to tell us something, sending us messages about the news of its time, when the extension was built. I can almost hear it saying ” Back in my day…”, whilst berating us for not putting the roof back on faster.
Yes, times certainly are changing here. 1963 seems so long ago, yet it isn’t, not really. Long enough for building techniques to change, but not long enough for headlines to fade. Which reminds me, now that we are mid-destruction, it might be the perfect time to stash those time capsules we made a year ago. There’d be plenty of wall cavities to pop them in, to be uncovered by a family in the future, as long as the world still exists then. Oooh! I could add in a newspaper headline relating to the current nuclear crisis for good measure.
In fact, maybe life in 1963 wasn’t too different, after all. Same sh*t – different day, as they say. But as I glance at my iPhone and tap the screen to summon my virtual friend, Siri, and ask him what the weather will do at 3.30pm today, I’m reminded that technology is the new form of witchcraft, and Buster Edwards would have raised his eyes in disbelief if he could see what we can do now.
My biggest hope, though, is that Donald Trump is able to swerve a nuclear war in the same way that Kennedy did. Before being assassinated…
“…Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” JFK, June 1963.
Good boy, John. Good boy.
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