Cornice

Almost every house I have lived in has had plaster cornice. This is because almost every house I have lived in has been built by my father who has a love affair with cornice and fucking built in pelmets.

I hate pelmets but I like cornice and not for the reason most people do, I bet.

When I was little, I shared a room with my sister. We had separate rooms after I was about 4 I suppose. I woke one night with an odd feeling. I was eyeballing a spider in its web. On the cornice, above the bedroom door, in the corner. It was cool and I wanted to tell Sis, but I had to look down and behind me to see her sleeping in her bed and that was scary and suddenly the spider disappeared and I was crying and woke Mum up. She said I'd had a bad dream and go back to sleep but the next day I dragged a chair in and climbed up as high as I could to look at the spider that lived in the web on the cornice in the corner above the door.

It was a daddy long legs.

In 1985, ex-hubby and I built our house, a two storeyed Villa-80 kitset home. Good buying, kept the mortgage affordable, and because we were then childless, we didn't need to finish off the top floor so it was just gib walls and junk and fleas in summer. We slept in the bedroom downstairs and climbed a ladder to get up there for anything stored. There were no stairs for the first year anyway.

One night, not long after we moved in, I was sitting up by the top ridge pole of the house looking at a nail that had come slightly through the side of a rafter, hidden right in the dark where the beams met. It was intriguing - no, not how did the mail come to be there, how did I come to be there seeing as my body was asleep some 20 feet below and a floor away. I was going to tell E-H about it but decided I'd rather brave climbing a ladder to look myself. Then ya don't look like such a twat, eh.

So I climbed up to the top floor, sprinted into Heather's-to-be room, past the hordes of fleas living in a roll of carpet and always with an eye for the main cat chance to get on and have a feed. I dragged the other ladder into the middle of the floor, climbed shakily up and had a look at the beam with a torch. Right at a nice shiny nail half protruding from the rafter.

As I climbed back down the ladder I mused on my findings. Actually I said "I gotta lay off so much weed for a while, it's fucking with my head".

Until I remembered my wee spider friend 18 odd years before. Before I'd heard of weed as more than something Mum bitched about us missing as we stomped her plants flat.

I haven't done it for a while, I have Spirit Fingers now instead but those bad practice takeoffs and hard landings seem to be a thing of the past since clonazepam fucked what was left of my intellect.

MS - if the disease don't get ya, the drugs will, man...

PS - don't touch the green acid.