It's All About The Address

Actually it's not about the address, exactly, but who can resist a pun when it's a. right there b. clean and c. linked to Elaine's fab post from yesterday? Not me.

It's really about the house.  Hands up if you've ever drawn a plan of Godsend Castle from I Capture the Castle. Just me?  I don't believe you.  I'm certainly not the only one who wears out the remote trying to establish the floorplan of Oscar's eight room apartment. 

I know this because there's a whole section called TV/Movie Houses in a delectable website called Hooked On Houses where Mildred Pierce's beach house, George and Mary Bailey's dream home and - joy of joys - Doris Day's fixer-upper from Please Don't Eat the Daisies are all there in their movie-still glory.  It's definitely not just me.

But when I sat down on Monday morning to start a new book and got out the tattered pile of press cuttings, scribbled-on napkins and post-it notes that I laughingly call an ideas file, it was still a surprise to see how many floorplans, blueprints and estate agents' brochures were in there.  And how few actual plots, characters and twists.  You know, the important stuff.

Mind you, I don't think writing down plot and character notes is the way to go for me.  The book I've just finished has a heroine called Opal Jones.  A file card in my "ideas file" had her down as Ambrosine Twigg.  Those are not the same person, those two.

Also, I found a very excited note about a genius plot - lot of exclamation marks and underlining  - which said:  Builders! Close chamber, dappled, broadship. Wheelie bins? Footbridge/stepping stones/ford/swim(?) Back pain, gen mod. NO MARRIAGE. keep this!!!

Do. Not. Have. One. Clue.  If it wasn't in my writing I'd think elves had put it there.

And anyway this time I know exactly what house my heroine's going to live in.  This one:

 

 

 

 

Here it is again in oils:

 

 

 

 

 

I know what the tug on the gate will feel like and the crunch of gravel in summer, the squeak of it under the snow in winter, as she walks to the front door:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know how the kitchen will smell when the oily old Rayburn turns out another batch of perfect bread:

  

 

 

 

and I know she'll wake to the bleating of the orphan lambs in their pen just outside the back door:

 

 

 

 

Not bad for three days' research, you say?  Well, I cheated.  This was my house in Galloway, my roses round the door, my bread, my favourite orphan lamb (and the painting we commissioned when we knew we were leaving.) I always meant to use it in a book as soon as I could be sure of not weeping so much I shorted my keyboard.  I'm going to chance it.  And for once I don't need to draw a single sketch or floorplan before typing "Chapter 1".

Comments

[Karen in Ohio]

Ooh, I'm also a floorplan junkie. And had no idea I wasn't the only one!

Your house in Galloway had a thatched roof? Such a lovely place; I can see why weeping was involved.

[Catriona]

Big old Victorian slates, Karen (I've just posted a clearer pic on facebook). They sometimes slipped and plummeted - should have been in Cluedo (US Clue. Colonel Mustard, in the garden, with the edge of an eight-pound roof-slate.

[Rick Blechta]

My wife enjoys nothing more than to curl up in a bed with a book of house floor plans (they do exist). In fact, I bought her an expensive software package so that she can do her own!

[Catriona]

Oh, Rick, I know. American Dream Houses is one of my favourites. Now, does your wife know that UK house-sale websites include floorplans? Try www.retties.com for Scottish ones.

[Sarah Rizzo]

My sisters and I would spend hours raking leaves into floorplans in the fall in Wisconsin. Designing the house was the best part.

[Diane Vallere]

Thank you for introducing me to Hooked on Houses. I'll finish this comment in a couple of hours...

[Catriona]

Don't blame me, Diane. It was Pillow Stalk (Diane's new murder mystery) that got me googling Her Dorisness in the first place!

[Mario in DC]

I remember reading in TV Guide (back when TVG still had actual articles) that people used to write to the tv show Bonanza to ask for floor plans of the Cartwright house ... You are most definitely not alone in your fascination with floor plans, I used to draw plans all the time as a child, my own designs as well as trying to determine the layout of the houses I saw on television. I'd cut plans out of newspapers and magazines, too, and paste them into a scrapbook, and still delight in finding them in books. Thank you for writing this article, it's good to know there are others like me out there!

And what a lovely house you had, the one in Galloway!

[Catriona]

Well. My name is legion, eh? Who knew.