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A House or a Home – –

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Jack fails again to get his Wednesday post up in time –

Wendy and I have moved house six times so far and it’s always taken us a while to get each one organized to our liking.

Our current abode/house/home

We started out in a small ground floor apartment in Rosyth in Fife and there wasn’t much choice there, with just a sitting room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and guest room. Then we moved to the wee village of New Gilston at the other end of the county and into what had been the schoolhouse. We were there for five years and it took almost all of that time before we finally decided which rooms suited which purpose!

After that to Padiham in Lancashire, England and a gatehouse built in 1790. It had been extended over the years and with lots of nooks and crannies. Once again we had two small spare rooms and once again it took almost until we left before we finalized which room was a home office and which was the guest room.

From there to White Springs in Florida and although the house had an obvious sitting room/dining room/kitchen, there were two bedrooms and again it took us a long time to decide which was which and which could also be a home office.

Continuing to Big Stone Gap Virginia and our bookstore, where we lived for fourteen years. The house was enormous and we started out living in the top story but over time that became part of the bookstore and our sitting room there became the ‘2nd Story Café’. I eventually converted our very dark and dingy basement into our bright and cozy apartment.

Finally here we are in Wytheville Virginia and in a lovely, well cared for, old house again. The lady we bought it from left a great bed and dresser in the main bedroom upstairs (mainly because probably she couldn’t get them out). So for the first couple of years we left things pretty much ‘as is’, including the well cared for back yard. In other words we continued to live in someone else’s house!

But now we’re beginning to make it our home and doing all kinds of changes that the poor previous owner would probably not approve of, although she might like the extended vegetable garden.

I suppose the message for today is that a house can become a home, but it can sometimes take quite a while!

The Monday Book: HOW TO DISAPPEAR by Frank Ahern

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This book called to me from a table at my friend Randy’s bookstore (Oracle Books in Wytheville). I started reading it while waiting for someone and found it fascinating in a narrative sort of way.

Ahern intersperses stories of catches and traces gone right and wrong with how-tos about erasing your digital footprint. I’m not trying to erase my DF, but I was interested in knowledge for character development in some fiction I’ve been toying with.

The canal story is probably the funniest part of the book; I won’t spoil it for you. Let’s just say that a manatee where he didn’t belong led to a whole lot of records burning and boxes flying out windows.

Ahern actually handles the moral dilemma of the work he does well, too. He points out that he doesn’t trace people who haven’t, in his words “done something incredibly dumb or incredibly illegal.” He also tells people being stalked, particularly women with abusive partners, how to not only disappear but leave a trail that would make any missing persons investigator feel sympathy and understand what the pursuit was about.

I like Ahern’s basic style, something not quite trying channel Dashiell Hammett, yet not exactly cozy, either. The book’s practical information on how find out what information is online about you is a wee bit suck-you-in, but the $50 fee will keep most people arm chair reading rather than actively engaged in an erasure.

As Ahern points out, a lot of disappearing is common sense, but some of it is subtle, and unknown to the average citizen. These are the points where you will get tripped up and caught out: relatives who don’t know not to say anything, service providers who cheerfully read off addresses and birthdates to “confirm” them to the person posing as a customer (which tracers often do) and hobby sites online where fake profiles appear about same time as you disappear. It’s astonishing how often those have made people visible, to hear Ahern tell it.

It’s not a book you have to be interested in disappearing to enjoy. Two (invisible) thumbs up for this work.