At Last, I Live in a Victorian House
Although it’s not quite the life I imagined
It is a normal night. My wife is in the living room, watching television. I’m making dinner — the oven preheating, a pan sizzling on the stove. Then, there is a bang, and we are in the dark.
Strange, I think. I mean, this has happened before, but we were running stove, oven, kettle and space heater, and it overloaded the kitchen circuit. This, however, is not just the kitchen; it’s the entire house.
With my phone as a flashlight, I inspect the breakers. The box is a shiny, up-to-date affair located inside our musty under-stair cupboard. I find the main breaker tripped and flip it back on. It snaps off again, instantly.
Shit.
“You’re so lucky! I always wanted to live in a Victorian house,” says a North-American friend of mine when I explain where I live in London.
“Me, too,” I say. And yet, this house is probably not what most Canadians or Americans picture.
Across the pond, the whisper of a Victorian house tends to conjure images of grand mansions — tall windows, high-peaked roofs, possibly a little turret-room with a wrought-iron adornment.
When I lived in Toronto, I used to walk down Palmerston Avenue, imagining that I might one…
