Upstairs

Life is strange and serendipitous. Russell was here to do things to the chimney and we left  him to it, remarking that we were off to photograph dereliction. Did we know about the old house up by the cross - you might have to climb through the window? We did not, we could do that and it sounded amazing. All plans were abandoned and we went off west. It was quite tricky to find but eventually we were rewarded. Another old farmhouse, just closed (1982 according to the calendar still just about on the wall) and left. The colours were jaunty and cheerful downstairs - pinks, blues, oranges and a padded black settle by the fire. Best crockery (Royal Vale) was still in a display cabinet, carefully arranged ware lined the dresser along with the Andrews' Liver salts, a once rather exotic cloth trailed in the mildwey carpet, the Sacred Heart and the blessed Lamp still on the wall in the kitchen. An old boy lived here I reckon, his rusty razor still on the shelf next to a  bottle of white lemonade; his shoes, two pairs, still under the settle.
I ventured gingerly upstairs - three small rooms, pine clad with floral wallpaper cascading off the gable ends. Beds with saggy ticking mattress, a picture of Jesus underneath one; a couple of tin trunks, an old chair, a towel still on a nail (the ewer finely decorated with pheasants was downstairs) ane the accumulated debris of 32 years of abandonment.
A couple more here.
And do look at Himself's wonderfully atmospheric downstairs.
This  is of course an entry for Sarumstroller's derelict thursday.