It is an old house that had once known grandeur but now has faded, motheaten curtains, cobwebbed windows whose sills are graveyards of dessicated insects, rising damp, mildewed furniture, dry rot, woodworm, subsidence, peeling wallpaper, rotten carpets, treacherous staircases, choking attics, dead smells, wasp nests, leaking ceilings, creaking doors, collapsed chimneys, grimy sinks, sagging floorboards, rat shit scattered corridors, cracked walls, crumbling plasterwork, dry toilet bowls, decades-old newspapers coated with decades-old dust on leaning tables, prone chairs, silent telephones, and vacant, forgotten ghosts who have nowhere else to go. Though on the ground floor, in the west wing, is one single room where there is a small stove that burns gently through the day and the night. There is a comfortable chair here, threadbare on the arms. There is a narrow bed and a table that is clean. The floor is swept and the window, though small, is open on sunny days. And if you want to come and see me, I will make you a cup of tea and try to remember.