Men In White Spacesuits

There was a merry bunch of men in white spacesuits in my room. They were handling hazardous material and had face masks. There is no longer a merry bunch of men in white spacesuits in my room. There is now a merry bunch of men in white spacesuits in my ceiling.

Loft insulation counts as a good thing. Anything installed into my life under the heading insulation counts as a good thing, as long as it's not a 20 pound body fat gain. Big huge rolls of the stuff (loft insulation, not body fat) heaved up a step ladder that's not put up right and certainly isn't stable. The small rectangular hole through which they pulled them is in my room, and I can just about see a trapezoid surface of rafters from the angle of where I'm sitting.

The first house I can remember living in had a loft. It was a giant-sized semi-detached in Sydenham, London, with 4 floors if you counted the nanny flat at the top. We left when I was 6, so it probably seemed a lot bigger than it was, but we had pigeons in that loft at one point and I remember standing at the bottom of a ladder for a weekend staring up through another hole in a ceiling while a friend of my mum's ran backwards and forwards into and out of sight, chasing pigeons.

Next house didn't have a loft. Next house had a thatched roof, and I watched the rethatching process with no small amount of astonishment.

When we started moving around more we stored a lot of our belongings in my grandparents' loft. The step-ladder didn't quite reach, and as the climbing frame addict that I was it became my task to climb as high as it went and then to swing myself up, my grandmother watching anxiously. I tried this again a couple of years ago with a chair and a body that hadn't done any gymnastics in over 6 years, simply because I couldn't be bothered to go fetch the now quite adequate ladder from the garage. There was a little thrill knowing that if I fell there would be nobody in the house to call to for help until the next morning, and a part of me wanted to dress up in black op gear and swing through holes in ceilings more often. I told my mum of my exploits the next day and got an earful for my daring.

Anyway, loft insulation is good, but watching bumps in your ceiling that move around and make the house look like it's half alive and about to try to eat me á la The Haunting is less fun. A crack has appeared across my ceiling running through the light fitting. I keep hearing various swearing and mentions of insurance. Apparently the room next to me has lost a little plaster. In all my experience of lofts I have never seen someone fall through the ceiling. The cliché holds a certain sense of dread fascination, but I hope today will not be the day I am to bear witness to such.

But at least I'll sleep warm tonight and they don't seem to be doing a Shooting Fish.