If anyone's read I'm The King Of The Castle by Susan Hill, they may remember a house named Warings, a huge dark mansion handed down through generations, with lots of small pokey rooms and some huge banqueting halls and vestibules which aren't really used. Like a version of Dickens' Satis House, except not burned to the ground. Well, this house is a bit like that.
It's huge. I think I'm in the smallest room. I've certainly been given one small enough to not really justify the amount of space. I've propped my netbook up on the bedside table (Lord forbid they give me a desk) and used the only chair - small, straight-backed and wooden - to sit on, so I have a semblance of a workstation. Not that I intend on doing any work. Writing blog posts and wanking to soft porn isn't work.
Not that I intend to do much of either. My computer being in the state it's in, although that appears to be fluctuating between on and off at the moment, watching soft porn is tricky anyway, but even if I did manage it, it's even more tricky since there's no lock on my door here, and the latch is broken, so I have little choice but to have it basically wide open. And my smallest cousin is in the room next door. He's 11 and I don't wish to be blamed for his corruption, especially as he's alert enough to pick up anything more than a gnat's whisper and bright enough to work out what sort of sounds constitute soft porn music.
Insofar as things to do are concerned - barring illicit self-indulgence in the smallest room (by which I still mean my room; the toilets are bigger than this, with their marble basins, &c.) - there are a number of things various members of my family have brought relating to sports. Of course, I hate sports. I just played bowls with my grandparents and started wondering what the point was after the first throw. I was pretty excited about there being a squash court, but mostly for the cavernous echo it elicits, meaning that when I went in there and sang Oh What A Circus! last night, it felt like I was on Broadway. And although the swimming pool is... well, it's a swimming pool... it's basically a square of water. The novelty wears off.
So I may have to strike out on my own.
This place has lots of grounds to explore. If you can find your way out of the house. I've done it twice so far, both by accident (and I've played Luigi's Mansion, so you can imagine how experienced I should be.). The trick, I believe, is to keep going down flights of stairs. I've actually no idea, geographically, where we are - besides knowing I'm somewhere in Sussex - but we appear to be in the middle of a wood, somehow (proof of this: I can see a tree outside my window, in the small patch of sky not obscured by roof in the wonderful view from said window). This may be the cue to grab my camera and disappear for a few hours taking pictures of trees. Hey, if I'm lucky I may end up somewhere interesting, like a forest glade full of faeries or a Goblin camp, but probably not. Well, unless I wish really hard.
Still. I'm on holiday. I just wish it weren't so damn boring by the time it's halfway through the first full day. At least I know my sister isn't enjoying it much either... she's resorted to writing her dissertation already.
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