The Missing Archeology of a House – someone is trying to eradicate me!
Somebody is deliberately eradicating me from history. I know that for a fact. I suspect that once they have eliminated my past they will come for me!
The first house we purchased in Hull was due to be demolished. It was true that we had bought it in a demolition area but all the same it was a bit vindictive and personal. We had lived there for a few years and had our second child in that house. Now they were going to pull it down.
I decided to go back for one last nostalgic look.
As it was the first house we had owned I had personalized it. I had painted bricks around the front door. I had painted the fence (made of upright railway sleepers) magnolia and painted orange, red and green dinosaurs on it that Dylan, our first-born adored. I’d painted ivy up the wall at the back, trailing around the window. I’d made flowerbeds out of old sinks which I’d painted flowers on. Inside I’d painted a mural of Dylan (our son) with the sun, clouds and balloons, playing in the garden with the cat among the flowers. In the stairwell my mate Pete had painted a mural of a scene from Jaberwocky. It was frumulous.
Our house was the end terrace. I drove up the deserted street and weaved around to avoid the bricks and rubble in the road. I parked up and got out. It looked the same. The painted bricks were still around the door. It was open so I went in, stepping over the mound of junk-mail. The mural of Dylan had gone but I wasn’t surprised. It was a bit personal.
The flowers snails and rabbits I’d painted on the mantel-piece had been painted over. They were gone.
Outside in the back garden it was much the same. The fence had become a bit jaded but it was still magnolia and the colourful dinosaurs still roamed the cabbage patch, the ivy still grew up around the window.
I went back inside.
The house had been empty a while and was a little worse for wear. I walked round from room to room allowing my imagination to take me back to the cuddles and laughter. It had been a house of love and warmth.
I noticed that in the front room there was a patch in the corner where the wallpaper had pulled back. I counted fourteen layers.
That intrigued me. I thought that one of those layers was ours. It was as though we were buried in the strata like on an archeological site.
Our paintwork had been distinctive with ochre, brown and the like. It felt as if I could peel back the one or two layers that must have been added since we departed and I would reveal our layer. I started doing it.
It wasn’t there.
I searched through all fourteen layers but there was no sign of ours. I checked another wall; then another. No matter where I looked I could not find our layer.
It was puzzling. I knew that it would have been impossible to remove a single layer without disturbing the layers underneath. Wall[paper did not work that way. Once you’d wetted it and started peeling parts would have come off easy and others would have been hard. I also knew that nobody would have put fourteen layers of wallpaper on in the few years since we left.
Our layer had to be there. I went through the layers meticulously. It was not to be found.
I started feeling a bit uneasy.
I went to a different room and did the same there with identical results. Our distinctive layer was definitely missing.
I became a man with a mission and went from room to room, wall to wall, in search of our life in the house but to no avail.
I tried the stairwell. I knew Pete had painted that scene on the emulsion on the wall. There had not been any paper there at all.
I pried the paper off back to bare plaster. There was no sign of the mural.
It began to feel creepy and a bit scary. I was alone, delving about in an old derelict house and all traces of our occupancy had been systematically removed.
Spooky.