Writing on the wall

One of things I love about writing is making discoveries. You put your character in a situation where they need to discover something to improve (or escape from) that situation. In one of my latest WIPs (The UltraTerrestrials) my main character finds a coin that literally turns her life upside down. Writing the part where she finds the coin was exciting for me and once I got into it, I couldn’t stop. I knew the coin was there and I wanted to make her work for it (I’m a bit mean like that when it comes to my characters!).

My love of discovery is one of the main parts of me that comes out in my writing. When I’m not writing I go to curio shops and antique shops and any other place that sells second hand goods to see what little (or big) treasures I can find. The biggest treasure I’ve ever found is the RUC. There are so many things in the RUC to discover – and just when I think I’ve found everything, something else pops up.

I’ve spoken to people who know about buildings and they all come up with one scenario – the RUC was built in the mid to late 1800s as a ‘government building’. The reason for this is its unusual design and the wood it’s made from. Money was no object when the RUC was built (typical government!). Every piece of wood in the place is beautiful oak, the large corner hard wood timbers are 6”x6” which is unheard of in many old buildings. It’s never had interior walls to make up separate rooms (like bedrooms), but it does have large unpainted marks on the floor (as if there has been some kind of counter near the front door).

But what was it? I need to take a trip to the Historical Society because I still haven’t figured it out, but I may have narrowed it down when I was working in there today.

Before it became the Rugby Union Club it was classified as a ‘government asset’ (I checked this out on-line, but unfortunately there was a fire in the council offices last century and a lot of information was lost) – so it was either a police station, an ambulance station, a court house, a school, or a post office.

I’ve experienced a lot of strange coincidences since the RUC came into my life and will one day write a story about them (they’re THAT good!) But today I was washing the walls to get them ready for painting when a wasp flew past my head several times. Yesterday I’d cleaned one of those muddy wasp nests away that was high up in a corner of the wall and I don’t want any more of them to nest before I screen everything in preparation to move in.

I ignored the wasp for a while but after it dive-bombed me for the tenth time I decided to follow it to see where it was building its nest. I walked out to the back veranda where the rugby union people had lined out an area to use as an office (which I’m going to strip out to convert to a guest bedroom). The wasp disappeared into a hole in the wall so I peeked through (no – it didn’t sting my eyeball!) but I saw something weird.

Being me, I grabbed a hammer and knocked a bigger hole in the wall so I could take a better look. I took a picture of what I found.

Below the word AMBULANCE is a phone number that looks quite old. I’m now thinking of crossing ‘ambulance station’ off my list because an ambulance station (by my way of thinking – but I could be wrong) wouldn’t have its own number on its back wall. However, a police station may have the ambulance number written clearly somewhere.

I haven’t smashed down the rest of the wall yet, but I’m certainly looking forward to it!

Have you made any interesting discoveries lately?