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Apart from a slight loss of appetite and feeling a little bit tired there were no side effects today either. A loss of appetite can be seen as a positive too as I am keen to lose some weight to avoid any health issues that might result from my recent loss. So as ever, conscious of how lucky I am and still finding it hard to believe that I've actually had cancer.
I took it easy nonetheless. Because I am not that much of an idiot.
Sitting in the snug, the oldest part of our old house (built in the very early 1700s), I have noticed something I've not seen in the almost four years of owning this house. There are two little cupboards either side of the original fireplace and I'd left one of the doors open and due to the light shining from a recently purchased lamp I saw initials carved on the inside: IW. I don't know if the cupboard is original, but from the hinges it does look old and the IW has the kind of lettering I associate with older, more formal graffiti. Was IW the person who owned the house back then, or the person who built the cupboard (or maybe the whole fireplace). Was he called Ian?
It's good that their little shout out from (maybe) 300 years ago and their shot at immortality has paid off.
We have an original window in our bedroom which is signed by the first (or early) owners of the property. One of them is called Isaac, but it doesn't look like his surname begins with W. Still well done to them all for surviving the vagaries of time as long as they have, if only in initial and signature form.
I could add my own. But I think it would spoil it. Even if the owners of this house in 300 years time might like it and wonder who the fuck I was too.
I often look at the old worn bricks on the fireplace, that are certainly 300+ years old and try and imagine the people who placed them there. It's impossible, of course and not just because I have aphantasia (which doesn't stop me imagining, just pulling up a clear image of what I'm imagining), but because our idea of a working person from 1700 is always going to be clouded by parody and stereotype. All I know is that, for sure, as they were building our house they were sucking on straws. That's definite.
There's also a beam above the fireplace in the wall and even though there is no mantelpiece above it, it is splattered with old brown and grey wax. Of course that could well be more recent, but it suggests that at some time there were wall mounted candlesticks up there and again those drips of wax might have been there for centuries.
They might be from the 1970s power cuts too, I guess.
