Seven Answers XX: A House

(This isn't my house; it's one of Seven Answers).

There is a family summer home built by my great great-grandfather that to me (and countless other relatives) meant idyllic summer days, long and breezy.  Though an undemanding place to be (being always there on holiday, we never had to be anywhere; days were our own to explore), the inside was captured time, frozen with old photographs tucked away in drawers - distant, dead relatives posing starchily like cut-out figures - while tattered, proudly dated furniture gave most rooms a museum-like feel.

On rainy days, there was a library to explore in the shaded section of the house, dark and mysterious with a Victorian sofa that scratched your legs if you got too close and an over sized desk with dusty, weighty bric-a-brac.  Formal books, all of the same golden font, lined the shelves.

Sunny days belonged to the large open kitchen, the informal part of the house, the only downstairs room living firmly in the present.  It was here, on a vinyl, plaid-covered table-top that we gobbled food, coloured and drew, and rushed furiously from to get back to the nearby lake.