“It’s embarrassing,” I
said. “And I feel like I have to explain myself.”
I took photos, measured
door frames, and made notes confident in what I was doing though Michele questioned
my actions.
“Are you sure there is
nothing wrong with your head?” she asked with genuine concern.
Thanks to the generosity
of a travelling friend, we were in the Wiltshire village of Sutton Benger living
in a four-hundred-year-old English cottage.
An archetype “chocolate box house” of the kind
Cadbury’s used to decorate its products in the late 19th century,
Bell Cottage had a thatched roof, wood beams covered in a plaster-like mixture,
and thick walls, maybe up to three feet wide in places. It once served, we were told, as a home to
the gamekeeper or other manager-level servant on an early Viscount Wellesley’s
country estate, and it had character and class.
The back doors of the
cottage opened into a long garden dense with a mix of ornamental
It was all very
pleasant. But my preoccupation rested on those wood beams and thick walls.
I kept hitting my head
on them, over and over again, as I passed through doorways built for people who
were either much shorter than my breed or bent over with heavy loads of game
and grain.
Our host had, upon
meeting us for the first time, warned us of the door dangers. In pointing them out, she looked past 5 foot 3
inch Michele.
I’m 6-4 and took note, being
familiar with the need to duck and stoop. But two months
So, on this day as our
time in the cottage neared an end, I decided to inventory and inspect the doorframes
and other contact points throughout the house to try to understand and document
the reasons for my continuing cranial collisions.
“Guess what?” I said
presenting my report to Michele. “The entrance way has four different doors
leading off it: one going outside, one into the laundry room, one into the
kitchen, and one into the back living room.”
“Yeah, I know that. So what?”
“They’re all different
heights.” I said with a whimper trying to describe the challenges I faced. “One
hits my forehead, another my nose, the entrance comes below my chin – almost to
my shoulder for Christ’s sake, and the kitchen door looks fine from the side,
but skims the top of my skull.”
I showed my
photographic and numerical evidence and then pointed out that not only were
these and other doorways dungeon-wall deep, but in places they changed heights
several times in the course of the passage.
On stairways, the hard surface above could be over your head as you
entered from one direction and below it at the other end.
“So, why don’t you just
crouch down all the time?” she said with sincerity.
“Maybe, I should always
walk on my hands and knees,” I responded with less sincerity, imitating a Neanderthal
in both posture and temperament. In any case, varying
heights and thick doorways were not my only challenge.
In the den upstairs, a white plaster wall enclosed
the doorway to the bathroom, but within the wall, dark beams formed a secondary
frame. At a glance, the timber looks
like the actual doorway and gives the appearance of something much higher. The white
plaster now carries light scuffs from many encounters with the side of my head.
“I know that taking
photos and measuring seems a little crazy, but like I said, it’s kind of embarrassing
that I’m still hitting my head after months in this place,” I said satisfied
and resting the case in my defense. “I felt like I had to justify it.”
