The Room of Requirement

For those visitors to the York household that have been appearing for years at our door they will have heard of our own personal ‘Room of Requirement’. Readers of the Harry Potter books will know it’s a phrase we have borrowed from J.K. and, though ours is a smaller scale, I will claim it is no less impressive. Impressive that is, until you come to move house and have to empty it……

So our R.o.R. is housed in our loft that is entirely floored and runs approximately 30m along the length of the bungalow. The passage is maybe only 2m wide but the rafters extend a space of another 2m either side before the crouch space is too low to pack any more in. Each and every rafter division is brimming with goodies that have been assembled over 20 years of married life and labelled with phrases like “this will come in useful in the future” or “I paid good money for that I’m not binning it”. The children have their own treasured possessions, a dolls pram, a favourite teddy “too precious to go to charity” or “will be played with again” that has been forgotten over the years, the odd Christmas or Birthday present that has yet to be unwrapped.

So far these are my favourite treasures: a collection of glasses that have survived packing and repacking from Derby to Dumbarton and the direct to loftspace in Helensburgh. Buddha is contemplating what to put in them.

The Armageddon supplies constructed by my wife the survivalist.

And a multitude of Art, out of which I picked this from my travels in Canada as a much younger man:

So far we calculate we are a sixth of the way through unraveling the history of the past 20 years and beyond. We may find time to empty it before we move out. Watch this space.