Of Haunted Desks and Victorian Values ...

It's a funny thing, I like to live in the present and look to the future, (which is kind of an odd thing for a history graduate to admit to I guess) but when all is said and done none of us can escape the past. The past is where our roots are; on a personal level, in our childhood and formative years, on a cultural level in the landscape and architecture of our homeland - my home looks out on the Uffington White Horse, carved into the hillside a mere 3000 years ago (give or take) - a daunting thought to make you appreciate the transience of your own life.

One of the things that I brought home from Mum's house, following her death, was a fine bureau topped by a glass fronted bookcase - a piece of furniture that I remember well from my childhood. It now stands in my home looking slightly less comfortable than it did in its previous location. It is the first thing I see when I open the front door, the first thing I see when I come down stairs in the morning -- and I am certain that it is haunted ....

When I look at it I remember and can almost see my father sitting at the desk working on lesson plans or writing letters - indeed the top couple of drawers still contain files of papers in his handwriting - my father has been dead for 28 years! The little pigeon holes of the desk contain all manner of letters, photos and other bits and peices belonging to my father's aunts and my grandmother. Whilst the bottom drawer is a treasure trove of older sepia photographs of relatives from an even dimmer and more distant past still. The bookcase housed many little bibles and prayer books each inscribed with one or other long dead relative's name. Works by Dickens and Trollop which I read as a child, The Peoples Pysician - source of many gruesome and alarming pictures and the root of my hypochondria I suspect. And a fascinating three volume set called Enquire Within Upon Everything -- well everything upto 1910 anyway!

Originally the bureau bookcase stood in the front room of what had been my great grandparents house then occupied by my father's two unmarried aunts and their unmarried aunt. One night during the second World War a bomb dropped in the park across the road from the house. The windows where blown in accompanied by various bits of shrapnel. The desk and bookcase bear scars from this incident which I can trace with my finger today. My father, then a child was in the house at the time and narrowly missed being impaled by bits of the park railings which came through his bedroom window -- or so the story goes -- it makes you think -- the transience of life ...

So is the desk haunted? -- truly, I have yet to see a ghost, but it certainly has presence and -- in the sense that it is imbued with the spirit of my ancestors -- I would have to say yes, I think it is ...

And the Victorian values?

Well last week my daughter took part in an immersion history lesson whereby her class were taken off to spend the day in a Victorian school. They had to dress the part and learn the rules: Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard, Speech is Silver, Silence is Golden and the like. She was particularly delighted by the fact that to ask to use the bathroom she had to raise her hand and when called on say "Please M'am may I visit the offices?"

So she is now well in touch with her cultural roots ...

May the spirits of your ancestors look down upon you with benign and watchful smiles:
AMx