Lofty Ambitions

‘This madness has to stop,’ my father said in 1967 when he found me skulking in the attic.

But it never did stop – the madness.

My most recent domestic misadventure began when I stepped through a portal at the back of the wardrobe and entered the fantastical Land of Loft – a topsy-turvy world of twisted joists and shivering timbers.

Despite the new house’s extraordinarily high EPC rating, the upstairs bedrooms were bloody freezing during the January cold spell. And no wonder. A quick survey revealed that the walls were only partially insulated and the ceilings not at all. When a north wind rattled the roof tiles, it felt as though we were sleeping in Scott’s tent in the Antarctic. ‘I’m just going to the bathroom,’ one of us might say, ‘and I may be some time.’

First up, I bought a job lot of foil-backed insulation boards from eBay and shoved the majority up gaps between the sloping ceilings and rafters. The remainder lined the walls of the dormer conversion until it looked like a space capsule newly clad in heat shields.

Unfortunately, heat could still escape via the flat part of the ceilings. And the roof space above those appeared inaccessible. To verify this, I strapped on a headtorch and shinned up the slope above the staircase ceiling to a cramped perch tight under the apex of the roof – the sort of overhung ledge where a raven might build a nest.

Hmm. It might just be possible to squeeze through between joists and rafters. Worth a try, surely?

I have a thing about attics. It began when, aged 13, I first teetered on the landing banister at our home in Wigan and heaved myself up through a hatch to enter a mysterious world where adults feared to tread.

Our attic wasn’t used to store anything. It was just a dark, filthy void that would periodically fill with coal smoke leaking from the chimney. I installed a plywood floor then carried up a chair, stock of candles, and eventually my schoolbooks. A room of my own.

Each evening I would disappear into the attic, ostensibly to do homework but actually to read Superman comics and smoke Woodbines. Apart from the perpetual darkness, it was like living in a well-appointed tree house, albeit one with an extreme fire risk.

Mum was not best pleased by the sooty handprints on the landing walls, but was otherwise resigned to my passive-aggressive behaviour. My father, though, wasn’t having it. Eventually he propped a step ladder on the landing and lifted the hatch to peer into the attic. ‘Come down from there at once!’ he demanded. ‘This madness has to stop.’

I refused.

There’s still some of that defiant brat in me today. Undaunted by the task ahead, I began to prepare strips of insulation to lay in the “inaccessible” part of the loft.

Normally you’d put kneeling boards down to avoid putting a foot through the ceiling. I had no such luxury of space. I even had to remove a matchbox-sized step counter from my pocket so I could squeeze through the narrowest of the gaps (now lost forever under a mound of insulating fluff). It also meant lying directly on the joists, supported at 40cm intervals by a shoulder, rib or hip. A bed of nails would have been luxurious by comparison.

During my life, I’ve wriggled through more narrow spaces than is generally considered sensible. Back in my early days of rock climbing, I would often seek out features known as squeeze chimneys, preferring their firm embrace to the precarious alternative of climbing exposed outer walls.

There’s a famous example called Monolith Crack in North Wales. In order to reach the innards of the cliff, you have to breathe out before squeezing past a constriction. You hope the crack will widen enough beyond it so you can breathe in again, but there’s only one way to find out...

My attic crawl, however, had most in common with a 15ft horizontal squeeze called the Cheese Press, encountered deep in Long Churn Caves in the Yorkshire Dales. The gap is just 10” at its tightest, so you have to decide beforehand whether to tilt your head to left or right. 3mins 30secs into this video gives a taste of the experience.

I’ve been through the Cheese Press three times and can vouch that it’s a lot more fun than my attic crawl. There, you can rest in relative comfort on a smooth bed of water-worn limestone until the waves of panic subside. Here, I was in constant discomfort from dragging myself over hard-edged timbers, some of which had splinters and nails protruding from them.

I eventually got within arm’s reach of the far wall and began laying strips of insulation between the joists.

Result.

When the job was done, and with no means of turning around, I had no option but to exit feet first, feeling my way with my toes. It was even less comfortable than the way in. My jumper had rucked up and the joists were now digging into bare ribs.

This was not the time or place to have a heart attack (I’ve been bumped even further down the cardiology waiting list, so the likelihood increases daily). The paramedics would have to bash a hole in the bedroom ceiling and saw through joists to get me out, hopefully in time to meet the deadline for the BBC’s North West Tonight. It would make better TV, surely, than another of those “13-hour ambulance wait evidences worsening of the NHS” stories. Then again, I might come across as a bit of plonker for getting stuck up there in the first place.

When finally I emerged onto the Raven’s Nest, I vowed I would never, ever, go back there again.

I woke the next morning with several yellow bruises on my legs and elbows, a bloody scar on my scalp, and a piercing pain on the lower left side of my chest. The bedroom was a tad less cold, however.

I got little sympathy from Marian for my heroic injuries. Later that day, I yelped with agony while rising from the dinner table.

‘Aarrgghh!!’ She echoed.

‘I don’t sound like that.’

‘You do. Aaarrrggghhh!!!’

‘I might have cracked a rib.’

‘Ha-ha!’

‘Punctured a lung, or something.’

‘Ha-ha-ha!’

‘I hope I have liver damage. Then you’ll be sorry,’

‘Drama queen.’

‘And I’ve got a cut on my head.’

‘Show me what hurts the most,’ she said, spluttering with laughter.

Wincing with pain, I slowly raised an accusing finger.