Not a Conservatory

A verandah or veranda.

It is a very rarely used word nowadays. I would challenge a cross section of the population under a certain age, if quizzed on the word, to actually know what it is.

It is a strange word, one of those of indistinct derivation but claimed to come from Hindustani, Bengali, Hindi or even Persian although adopted undoubtedly  in England as a borrowed bit of language from the days of Empire.

There are many perceptions of what a verandah is.

In original form it is described as an open sided walkway or portico which is all well and good in a sub tropical climate to keep a barrier of cooled air and channel any faint movements of air but inevitably its adaptation to the inclement British weather involved it being an enclosure or a lean-to structure.

I speak from first hand experience in that my formative years were largely conducted in such an addition to the family home.

It stood against the back wall of the modest semi detached house and served as a play-room, day-room, a sun room on rare occasions (although I suspect it actually faced north and was shaded apart from where the passage of the sun just caught the eastern and western end panels) and a place in which to be mighty afraid of the dark in.

The latter forms a very strong memory in that the house was at the end of a cul de sac roadway and bordered on two sides onto open agricultural fields. The capture of the seemingly glowing red coals of the pair of eyes above a long foxes snout in the headlights of my parents' car as it pulled up on the driveway instilled great fear and trepidation about entering the verandah after dark even if the retrieval of a toy or a book was of paramount importance. In the imagination of a young lad, as I was; the same fox would be watching the house, perhaps plotting to carry me off or at best licking its lips in anticipation of a feast on human flesh.

The structure must have been of some age as it was already well established when we moved in. It was a basic framework of timber uprights, horizontal struts and bracings and infilled with shiplap boarding. This was faded and blackened in equal proportion from weathering of the creosote coating and the persistence of moisture and condensation in such a draughty space. It was in an era when nobody bothered with insulation or measures to combat global warming.

In a stiff breeze any loose laid papers or wheeled childrens brick trolleys or toy vehicles could be seen moving along under wind induced momentum. As for the protection from above, the roof, it was made up of a number of flimsy, clear corrugated plastic sheets which flexed in stormy conditions, drip leaked in the lightest of summer squalls and just gave up and collapsed under the faintest dusting of snow or ice.

In all, our verandah was not much more than a semi-rigid tent like appendage and yet we, as a family, spent countless hours in it and enjoyed its eccentricities and instabilities.