L Space

Literature has many examples of places that are bigger on the inside than the outside. The Tardis, Narnia, the Unseen University Library, for example. What people don't realise is that these are all based on our loft.

We've lived in this house for 17 years now. In that time we've never thrown anything out. We've bought plenty of stuff, but we've never thrown anything out. All this has to go somewhere, so for a few years the rooms get fuller and fuller and then we go into a Spartan phase. This is usually triggered by redecorating or by the fact that we can't open the door to a particular room because of all the clutter in it or because we've just seen one of these house programs where they tell you declutter the house, but whatever the reason, the house gets cleaned up. We must have been through about 7 of these phases, and each time we don't do any throwing out.

At this point I must admit I am indulging on hyperbole. Of course we throw some things out. We have replaced the fridge, dishwasher, oven and settee, and I must admit that these have found their way to the tip. But the rest of the stuff, the ornaments, vases, pictures, statues, plates, old games machines, fish stuff, excercise bikes .... These all go onto the loft.

For the first ten years I was very careful on where I put things. Then I started to get blase and just throw stuff up there and this is where I discovered the secret ... Our loft has Infinite Space! Things just go in there. You have a tidy up of the house, you throw the items up into the loft and it fits!

I must confess I am making an assumption here. I am assuming that the stuff I put up there stays there. I am assuming that we have infinite space. The other alternative is that we have a wormhole at the other end of the loft and there is some alien civilisation out there that is based on the throw outs that we put into the loft. I can imagine some green skinned, eight tentacled monster is trying to work out how to operate the controls of the original playstation, or a greasy blob-like entity is oozing all over the high chairs. We are probably maintaining some early civilisation in its entire yearly requirement of ceramics.

However, I am fantasising here and the idea of a wormhole is clearly ridiculous. The alternative is much more believable.

In fact it occurs to me that this solves our landfill problems. For the benefit of foreigners reading this (yes I mean my american relatives here) the UK is having severe landfill problems, where we don't have enough space to put all our rubbish. I therefore think I'm onto a bit of a moneyspinner here. I am proposing to rent out our loft space to the local council. Of course, I'm not going to take any old rubbish. Garden waste, rotten potato peelings and last week's kitty litter is out. But old microwaves, chairs, household ornaments ... Yup, can find space for these. They can keep the other stuff company.

I could make a fortune.