Haunted House

Those of you who have followed my little journal will know that I have spoken with great affection of my maternal grand parents indeed as a child and right through my teens I was known by "the old villagers" as my grandfather's grandson. Now however our little village has changed, no longer does everyone know everyone else which in many ways is very sad.

As a small child if my parents were going out it was a real treat to go and stay with my grandparents overnight, in the summer my gran and I would walk, very often over The Moss, a wetland area now a wildlife reserve. We would often return back into the village onto the golf hill where there were some of the most beautiful houses, These properties, mostly architect built for Victorian merchants, including one built by Charles Rennie McIntosh, are large and in the main sit away from the roads that serve them in large secluded grounds.

This house was always refereed to as the haunted house, with the dark oak beams and gothic style it differed from the surrounding houses which were more traditional Scottish design. This house was first viewed from an elevated position as the the road drops very steeply to the junction opposite and as such you feel you are almost level with the roof as you approached. This brought you level with the gargoyles, and it was these that led me to think the house was haunted, often I would have played in The Moss while my gran would sit on the solitary bench, quietly watching over me as I explored and had a ball to myself. In the late summer it would often see us heading home as the light of that summer evening slipped away and as such when we passed this house it all added to the mystique that surrounded it and the haunted image, maybe I had watched too much Scooby Doo!!! When we got home, a shower and then a seat by the fire for warm milk and usually some form of confection from the cake tin, an ever full casket of delights as like so many women of that generation my gran was a fabulous baker. Before being parcelled off to bed my grandfather and I would play cards, he was a wonderful bridge player but he and I would play whist and cribbage before I was prised away and into the warmest bed I can ever remember...

I spent a lot of today laughing, an early text and conversation with my friend, and their description of a "spa day" had me chuckling out loud at the thought...

So before the rains returned a solitary shot of a big house in our little village, a shot of a memory, times I reflect on with a warmth of the love I received from my grandparents. I hope you enjoy this shot,nothing special but sometimes its not about the shot but about what that shot evokes....