When we were small, there was an outbuilding which was out of bounds.
We called it the ruin, although at the time, it still had a roof.
But that did not deter snakes to nestle there in Spring and have their offspring born under cover.
It had been the place where our ancestors had made candles.
It was their business when electricity did nor exist.
Because it was no longer safe, the villagers told us we were not to enter, because the ghost of the Candle Man lived there.
And we believed them.
As time went by, we all went our own ways, and the house was left to be visited once in a blue moon, as a meeting point when family members returned from their wanderings.
The outbuilding roof tiles cracked under the passing of many stray cats; the water trickled in and slid down the rafters and rotted them and the whole roof eventually came down.
A real ruin it had become.
As years rolled on, nature took its course.
The persistent seeds from some village figtree fell within the four still standing thick walls and took to some crack on the schist tiled floor.
Soon, its vibrant green branches could be seen from afar, birds came and one even used the cracks on the walls to build its nest and settle.
The bird is long gone but the nest is still there.
The heavy wood door soon came off its hinges, from so many pushings and pullings of village children’s small hands trying to find out what was within.
And that’s the state it was in when the family returned.
Lots of discussions took place.
“Knock it down. It’s unsafe”.
“We don’t need it”.
“Why would you want to keep a ruin?”
“It’s cheaper to build new”.
But the sense of the place prevailed.
We could not destroy our ancestor’s workplace, so we decided to rebuild it.
But it hardly stood up by itself.
So we devised a way and built a new wall parallel to the ruin and tied it back to the old walls.
In the end, we had to build it all across the buildings to hold them together and keep the ruin upright.
The wall started where it was safe to tie back, in front of the main building, and mirrored the three existing arches.
It continued all the way until the end of the ruin.
When it was finished it had 9 arches.
The house had been reborn and taken a new name.
Thank you Candle Man!
