The lounge room is warm. I return to the coal heater, still burning, but needing more briquettes. The standard lamp sheds a subdued light through its yellowed cloth shade. The shadows on the ceiling blend with the cracks and paint discolouration. I sit in the armchair with the plastic over the headrest. There are turned pieces below the armrests, I run my hand along them feeling the lathe blade carve the concentric curves smooth around my finger tips. I place my feet on the small rectangular ottoman, it is also covered in plastic. I can see myself sitting there in the photograph, watching the briquettes glow slowly as I prepare the stamps to go into the album, my hands shaking as I slowly locate them on the page. Later I will give up with the glassine hinges, instead using the gum on the back of new stamps. I will stop bothering with the used ones—though still soaking them off their envelopes to place them in small cardboard boxes. The new mint condition corner or gutter blocks fill the albums now.

The familiar tick of the wooden mantel clock locates this space, chiming once on the half hour, and the number of the hour otherwise. The fire occasionally crackles, and besides the clock there is no other sound; though my electrical synapses have a constant buzz; I know this electrostatic sound well. The carriage clock makes no sound, for it has not been wound for a long time, yet in its diminutive size there are the absent voices, the texts of objects and spaces. The house is very still, the images shudder.