Light dawns

Chris had already drilled a hole in the bedroom ceiling through which we would pass the threaded end of the hook's shank, narrowly missing the electrical cable which had gone off in a completely unexpected direction. We had realised that the shank was too short to pass through both the ceiling and the floor, but were confident that we knew where the hole would be. But as we peered around between the joists, we could see no sign of a hole. Alan went back downstairs and poked a screwdriver into the hole. It jammed against something solid. Could we have drilled into that beam, all five inches by six inches of it? Perhaps we should have taken the measurements of the ceiling and the loft floor before drilling the hole.

Measuring the loft floor was quite a feat. Firstly, it involved crawling through dust which appeared to be been gathering since the house was built in 1840. We had to crawl in order to reach the edges of the floor under the sloping roof. The we had a few tricky moments as we were using a six-foot tape to measure a floor which was sixteen feet by twenty. We might not have needed to be exact to the thousandth of an inch, but we did want to avoid drilling into any more beams. Eventually, we thought we had the measurements accurately enough.

Now, of course, we needed to transfer those measurements from the loft floor to the bedroom ceiling. Strangely, the bedroom ceiling seemed to be a slightly different size to the loft floor - one wall was two inches shorter, another just one inch longer, while a third was as much as three inches longer. Only the fourth was almost the same size as the loft. It probably didn't help that we were using that six-foot tape while standing on steps and chairs on a distinctly uneven floor, and stretching over our heads to measure the ceiling.

We went back up to the loft to check our measurements. At least there was less dust to crawl through this time, much of it having already been transferred to our clothes, up our noses and into our mouths. We need not have bothered: the measurements were spot on.

After arguing amiably for a while, we decided that each of us should mark where we thought the hole should be and we would then draw lots. The winner (or should that be loser?) would then drill through his hole. It was Alan who won, and as he withdrew the electric drill, we were delighted to see light shining through the hole.