hieroglyphics

At 6:30am or so we hear a key turn in the basement door lock and the first footsteps quietly entering the cavern we call home below stairs. By 7am boards placed up for overnight security are being ripped down and by 7:30am, the screech of the saw, the bawl of the drill and the crack of the hammer introduce today's symphony. We move around and work at our desks upstairs feeling the floor move below us with each hammer wham and see the dust come up through the vents and floorbooards in little puffs.

There are moments of calm - deliberations or lunch - and then it starts up again. Our voices level up a notch and then down again as needed to be heard above the cacophony. And then suddenly everthing is still. Involuntarily we look at the clock and it's 4pm. Suddenly - poof - they are gone. All is still, the only sound heard is the dust settling on surfaces for the night.

We take our door key and go down to see the progress of the day, eyes blinking in the gloom as we roam around, looking up at beams and along at joists and down at bases and pipe fittings. The most intriguing thing we've noticed however is the appearance of mysterious hieroglyphics on bits of wall, like some message left for the afterlife of our house. We pass our hands over the indents made from HB2 pencil pressed into soft fir and try to make sense of them. Some look mathematical, some geographical and some artistic. What can they mean?