Getting a home for the family

Your grandpa is gifting me 'Trim Lodge,’ playfully my friend Shiv Sharma, teases our granddaughter Niharika. ‘Why not?’ I play along with: ‘We can shift into a flat—one key and you can come and go.’ Horrified, she stutters: ‘How can you? ‘The last storm discovered all the joints in our harness,’ wrote a diarist, in the 1880s, adding: ‘It was at night, and my endeavours to sleep through it were put an end to by heavy drops beginning to fall on my face. The first drop murdered sleep effectively, a few more made me jump up to drag the bed into a dry place.’ Leaky roofs gave birth to the attic with the advent of galvanised iron sheets, probably at the turn of the 19th century; the second roof was hammered above the thatch. Arrived our prosaic times, Abha, my wife announced: ‘There’s just too much clutter in the house!’ ‘Why not a yard sale?’ I mocked.