What lies beneath...

The house I grew up in had no basement, it sat on a concrete slab. What was below your feet when you stood on the ground floor was carpet, underlay then concrete.

The house I live in now has a basement that goes under the whole of the ground floor.

Today image is the door to that dark area.

It is easy to forget that the ground beneath your feet is not completely solid. You walk along a thin layer of wood attached to the bottom of which are beams, nails, screws, cables, water and gas pipes, waste pipes and metal ducting.

Seven and a half feet below the thin layer of wood is all the junk that we have in the basement. Standing at the left side of the patio gazing out to the bird feeders there is, only about a foot below your feet, a seven foot Christmas tree with its tip point up towards you.

When you stand at the cooker you have below you the narrow end of the basement which contains a strange roughly homemade wooden table that forms a U shape around the corners. This table has an odd looking hole about the size of a toilet seat cut into it. Not having the appropriate hobbies to recognize the purpose of this hole it was an infrequently considered curiosity until investigation of the fuse panel during a power outage led me to discover a switch with a stick label next to it saying ?train set?, uninteresting the mystery was solved. Its funny how even the most mundane of mysteries can give you that ?Aha!? moment when they are solved ?.

The owner of the train set was apparently in prison when we purchased the house. According to the real estate agent he and his wife were no longer together due to the fact that he was a teacher and had been having ?inappropriate relations? with one of his male students. We weren?t sure whether we believed the tale but it was later confirmed by neighbors. The real tale was ?simpler? in that the student was in fact female? but more complex in that Mr Trainset found out the Police were coming to arrest him at his school so made a run for it and then intentionally drove his a into a tree off the interstate. This did not have the desired result however as he apparently survived and went to prison, according to the neighbors he also received a bill for the helicopter called to ?rescue? him and for the police costs for closing the interstate etc. Which just goes to show its more cost effective to do a job properly or not at all.

So wherever you stand pay attention, although you can see further left, right, backwards and forwards if you look down and think what is truly below you it can be surprising to realize what is truly below you? what is underneath.


For those who have been looking to put a face to my username? I promise that tomorrow I will do my first self portrait?