SHUT that dooer! Put wood in’t oyle! Knock knock! Who’s theer? Ian! Ian who? Ian McMillan, who’s writing a column about doors!
Yes, this week I’m turning my thoughts to doors because we’re thinking about having a new door or two and I have to confess that doors are never a thing I’ve given much thought to because, well, life’s too short to be thinking about doors all the time.
Or is it? Well, maybe not. For a start, what an amazing invention a door is!
Imagine life before doors, thousands of years ago in a cave or a hut. There would be no protection from the wind or the rain or any marauding animals that happened to be knocking about.
You were exposed to all the elements and yes, you could huddle in the corner of the cave/hut but the snow could still come howling through the hole where a door should have been if anybody had got round to inventing that.
So then, as my door reverie continued, I tried to imagine the moment when the first door was invented.
What genius thought of it? Maybe it was someone really really clever who invented the wheel in the morning and the door in the afternoon. But how did they invent it?
Well, my theory is that the person who came up with the door was a bit of a big ‘un and one day they stood in the gap where a door would be and the other people inside the hut/cave noticed a change.
It wasn’t as cold. It wasn’t as windy. There was no rain getting and soaking them to the skin. The person standing in the door tried to move because they were freezing and soaking but the folks inside implored him to stay there.
And thus the idea of the door was born. Later that day the hole-blocker went and got a fallen tree and put it in the entrance where he’d been standing and the tree did a similar job and some of the weather was kept outside.
Of course the tree wasn’t a very good fit so, as the winter approached, the people who lived in the cave/hut got their axes and other tools and began to shape the fallen tree until it fitted in the entrance.
Well, more or less. There were still places where the wind could howl through and the sleet could sneak in but it was a decided improvement on what they had before.
One problem was that, although it kept quite a bit of cold out and quite a bit of heat in, the tree was really heavy and hard to move and so it was a huge operation to get in and out.
So the person who had come up with the idea of putting, literally, the wood in the hole, began to formulate the idea of making something that could be moved more easily and, after a process of trial and error, ended up with a shape that was something like the door we understand and would recognise today.
I guess that handles and hinges and letterboxes came much later, but the basic design or the door has been with us for many, many years.
Then I started to become a bit obsessed with doors and what they can do apart from just opening and closing and squeaking and getting stuck.
They undoubtedly play a major part in just about every novel you’ve ever read as well as almost every film or TV shor or play you’ve ever soon.
Think about it. The quiet household before the cops come bursting in, shattering the door as though it’s made of balsa wood.
The eerie and goosebump-inducing creak of the castle door swinging open to reveal someone who has for some reason left their head in the car.
The comedy arrival of the person who shouldn’t be there because the person you don’t want them to see is sitting on the settee.
The knock at the door that reveals the person you weren’t expecting, the person who left home many years ago.
Maybe the person who went to war. Maybe the person who just went out for a pint of milk. Whatever their story is, it begins with a tentative knock at the door.
All these stories, all these doors. And of course, in any film or TV drama there’s always a knock on the door and then somebody says ‘All right, all right, I’m coming!’
Doors, eh? They’re so adoorable! See what I did there?
