the front door

painted six times, in the colour of the householder at the time. a sage green, then a slow red, then a navy that turned grey by the second winter, then an ochre that nobody admits to, then a brown, then the present grey-cream that the village calls bone. the chip at the bottom-left shows every layer at once, a small geological honesty.

it opens onto the street and onto the hall. most of what arrives at the house comes through here: the footsteps, the letters, the wrong umbrellas, the rain in long strands across the boot-rack. the postman's hand knows its weight to the ounce.

its sound is two — a brass bell that needs winding once a fortnight, and the click of a latch that has been replaced twice but never improved. neither announces who is arriving; that is left to the custodian to deduce from the knock.

field-note · run a thumbnail down the chip; you can read the household by colour, like a tree by rings.