I moved into Belfiore Lodge on 28 December 1985.
It was an attic flat with sloping roofs, which left awkwardly-shaped wall space for standard book shelves. Shop-bought ready-made book cases were out of the question. Putting up our own brackets meant taking precise measurements for every single one of the planks as each level would be a different length. We were also not that confident about our drilling skills for the brackets.
To match the style of the house (see blog entry A family of skip raiders 02), we decided to make the book shelves out of bricks and planks. A house a street away was being renovated, and the skip outside was full of old bricks ripped out. Unlike new bricks, they had different hues—tinges of reddish brown, orangey brown, purply blue. The type one sees in old houses in England. Just right for Belfiore Lodge.
We went out late one drizzly Sunday night, as no-one would be out and about, and humped back bucketloads of these bricks, getting wet and slightly muddy, looking like a couple of hobos. Then, we washed them, to get rid of the mud, and dried them in the oven of the dinky 1930s cooker, which we’d kept going in the winter for heating, as all the flats (bar one) in Belfiore Lodge had no central heating.
It was a time warp experience in every step of the way! Most fitting for a time-frozen house like Belfiore Lodge.
(London, 1986)
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