Lock the study door ( Study ? Why not office ? Because it’s an old house, Charles I or II II. Office would sound too sleek, too modern. Refuse to hear any other sounds, not easy as the F 35s and F 15s scream across the sky. Pretend I’m Trollope, and make myself write for three hours every morning, before sorting out the Post Office ? ( and remember to feed cats) On a bright cold day in April, think, silently, of every word I crave to write, get this story out, even if everyone in my life insists I do something else, including the garden. Which story ? Currently, still the one about a ghost, working title, A Child Crying. Don’t believe in ghosts ? Like Scrooge on Christmas Eve, neither did I. Dismissing Marley’s ghost, Scrooge knew what was wrong, refused to trust his senses.
‘ A little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may b e an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.’
Add electromagnetic fields, toxic mould, carbon monoxide, infrasound, draughts and all the other explanations for imagining you’ve seen, heard or sense a ghost. In a haunted house, sceptics and unbelievers long for a scientific explanation. What if we could try the Hadron Collider ? Maybe, but its scope might be limited. More things in heaven and earth.
Not scientists, novelists can take any position they like. Teasing Catherine Morland, Henry Tilney knows all about the horrors of a building like Northanger Abbey., its oldest parts undoubtedly haunted, but after a night of terrors, the sinister ebony chest conceals nothing more dreadful than a laundry list. Belief in ghosts can be mocked, stignatised, and even punished. Locked in the room where Mr Reed died, Jane Eyre’s terrified, but only servants like Bessie and Sarah believe in ghosts. Apothecary Mr Lloyd dismisses Jane’s fears. The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?” pursued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was gone. .“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark.” I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time. “Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?”
Belief in ghosts can be mocked, stignatised, and even punished, like little Jacob Postlethwaite in The Woman in White, berated by his teacher. ‘ There are no such things as ghosts, and therefore any boy who believes in ghosts believes in what can’t possibly be; and a boy who belongs to Limmeridge School, and believes in what can’t possibly be, sets up his back against reason and discipline, and must be punished accordingly. 1 But what if several people see the same ghost. Did the house where we used to live pass the Lille test ? Wait and see.
Connection with room staging and any kind of gardening ? I’m trying to write , or rather, finish editing a ghost story, and we need to sell the office with rooms and decent broadband. If not sold asap, we’ll have to pay triple tax, because it counts as a second home. All second home owners are hateful and selfish, even if they simply needed broadband in order to work ( and pay tax.) If only we weren’t married, we’d be allowed to own one house each and pay far less tax. As it says in the script, for richer. for poorer... Local or national, all governments need collect as much tax as they can from as many people as possible. They do this by giving themselves permission to collect different kinds of tax. In the UK, many old houses have strange, window shaped dents in their walls, thanks to the Window Tax, invented in 1696, supposedly to pay for money lost to coin clipping fraud. Income tax was invented in 1796, by the Pitt the Younger, to pay for fighting Napoleon. 1769 – 1821. Pitt’s successor, whose name nobody remembers, came up with almost every other kind of tax., but left some loopholes for his successors. Disraeli, 1804 – 1881, who knew how to win elections, promised to scrap income tax. The good news is, real fibre broadband might be coming our way ( or might not, if too much scenery gets in the way) Less good ? Selling the office, with broadband, we have to pay capital gains tax , because ( allegedly) it’s increased in value. A bit better ? Married, we get a tax allowance each…
In Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder, the last Miss Marple, New Zealander Gwenda Reed buys a six bedroomed villa after just one viewing, messaging her husband, still in New Zealand, Have Bought A House. A month later, she’s in the house, and the builders have finished quite a lot of work already. How ?
We’re selling a little terraced house, three beds, two recep, kitchen, bathroom , loft, and far too much garden, grass cut yesterday, by me. Converted in the late 19th c from old farm buildings to house country workers, was riddled with asbestos when we bought it, isn’t now, but are we ? Distance to good primary school, 30 sec, if dawdling.
How to sell ? De- cluttering was the easy bit. Not even toothpaste and a brush in the bathroom ? Definitely not. Apparently people need to be able to see this as their space. Next ? Room staging ? It’s a little terrace house, not Hampton Court, but if my Grandma ( not my Gran) heard the words Lounge Diner, she might never recover. In her day, there used to be words you just didn’t use, ever. High on the list, Lounge. Another word starts and ends with T Next on my list ? Weeding, mowing mulching, vacuuming , dusting praying for a buyer. Will the new broadband project reach us, or will they give up in despair ? And why did a Gentleman move to our house with his butler, in 1939 ?
East of the Sun, West of the Moon, sat nav won't like that 
I’m using that same quote from Dickens in my latest book, as well as one from Hamlet, but not the same one. We had to pack up and stage my mother’s house in order to sell it. Good luck with yours.
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