6 MAY 1989, Page 29

The Builder's House

This was Mills the builder's house: outhouse after outhouse at the back as if from the start he was travelling out. The kitchen, a shack at the side, had a stove and cold tap, there were buckets to catch the leaks from the roof, walls unpainted, rooms unheated — the whole place neglected.

A lifetime he spent doing the houses of others, his own left undone but for one refinement — in every dark cupboard he fixed a light.

And maybe he had his priorities right leaving the front of his life unpainted