Once upon a time

Once upon a time there was a house.  It was a rambling house that rambled in a rambly, though not ramshackle, way in its very small park in a largish though friendly city.  This house had a lot of character which means that you could see places where the walls had been patched and places where the walls had not been patched; some rooms had been renovated and some just had grand plans; people going down the stairs from one floor to another often found themselves facing at least 90 degrees from the direction they felt they should be facing.  Going up was a similar experience, sometimes in the opposite direction depending on the confused state of the person climbing.

The house was furnished in a very eclectic style, most closely resembling one of those used bookstores in which the sole clerk seems unwilling to ever sell anything.  This house had more space and more light than such places but just as many books just as determined to stay, stacked any which way, and just as many cats determined to do whatever was least convenient at any time.

The people who lived in the house were varied and constantly changing but not in a hectic way.  The house was owned by a man and a woman, married to each other, who lived there with their son.  They shared the house with two cats, a ferret, a cockatiel and a bluish-red fish in a bowl as well as an ongoing assortment of boarders and guests.  The borders were mostly international students, or students of the man or friends or (when it couldn't be avoided) family.  The guests were friends and students and teachers, sometimes all three in one person.  It was a very happy house, didn't make much sense, but happy and the people in it were happy too.

None of the rooms was very large, so all of these people were rarely all together at any one time.  If they all decided to eat together, at Thanksgiving for instance, there was no place where a large grand table with the fine china and silver could be set up.  Therefore, they got rid of the table and silver and consistently refused the efforts of family and friends to give them fine china.  Instead they made food that people enjoy eating and ate it off of paper plates usually with their fingers while standing or sitting around in an ever changing organic sort of flow.  Dull people tended to all end up together in one place with not much conversation and usually did not come back which served everyone well: the dull people didn't feel excluded and the interesting, engaged people didn't feel glumpily dutiful about trying to include them.

This may be the book I am writing.  We will see.  Perhaps I will only write it while I am drinking martinis and call it the Martini Manuscript in a very pretentious sort of way.  I already see the influence of Winnie the Pooh and Mistress Masham's Repose, also Dr. Doolittle.