It's amazing what you can find when you aren't looking for it. This is something that I found out firsthand today while helping a very particular grandfather to clear out his attic. Said attic's contents had been accumulating objects - and dust - for several decades at least.
You may be surprised to know just how much dust actually settles on a single rug. I'll give you a hint: it's a cloud. A cloud of dust manages to weave itself into the fibers of a carpet over a large amount of time, and there were at least a dozen carpet pieces and rugs in that attic. This led to a large amount of wheezing and sneezing on my part. Highly unusual. Of course, none of those involved in the clearing had any love for dusty rugs, so they were all chucked into the van and moved to the tip along with a large number of empty cardboard boxes.
It really is quite wonderful what you find in the deep corners of the roof space though. For a start, there was the set of scales we found. I believe them to be a pair of postage scales, once used to weigh packages in order to estimate the cost of sending them. This perhaps archaic device was certainly interesting. It provoked a certain amount of speculation among those present. Stranger still was the box of ammonites, sulfur and geodes recovered from a darker corner. Apparently the old man was a fossil hunter. It looks like he raided a quarry, to be honest... The number of bivalves and assorted molluscs available was phenomenal.
The thought occurs to me that these places are time capsules: gathering dust over ages, they contain treasures unseen for many years. Therefore, if I ever have the opportunity to own a house, I'm going to load the attic with stuff like that - though not, as it seems, rugs. Because no-one likes rugs too much. Not twenty year old ones, at least.
I'm off to set up the CD rack that I salvaged. Loading with Iron Maiden albums... Loading...
Regards,
Pisces
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