We are approaching a massive estate - consisting of long 12-storey blocks of flats and 25-storey tower blocks - in the process of being demolished.
Some of the buildings have already been flattened, some are missing a wall; here and there there is a solitary wall standing, the rest of the tower block missing.
We enter one of of the better preserved blocks. After walking into a lot of empty flats – some with gaping holes where there should be walls, others with wide clefts in the floor – we find ourselves in a flat that has been seemingly untouched since its occupants moved out. The apartment is fully furnished and clattered with stuff. There are no signs of anyone packing or removing anything from the flat. It feels strange that whoever used to live here left everything like that and makes me wonder what could have happened to them. The first thing that catches my eye is a rack with woman's clothes. There are dozens of dresses, tops, coats and I start picking out the ones I like and putting them on the side. I can hardly believe how many almost identical-looking frocks there are. Most of them are old-fashioned, made of artificial fabrics. After a while the items become smaller and I am now looking at a child's clothes, a boy's probably. I realise I wasn't at all checking the sizes and most of the clothes I picked will be far too small for me anyway. I go to the other room (or is it still the same room, just very big? I'm not sure) and start looking through books and magazines - there are a lot of periodicals and daily papers in piles everywhere. In a kind of big niche in one wall, there is a bedroom, entirely taken over by a massive bed covered with red throw. It reminds me a little of an interior of a baroque church, though a modest one. There are several wooden columns creating a sort of entrance leading to the actual sleeping area and on the left hand side there is something resembling a small, richly decorated altar. Outside the “entrance” there are heaps of small books and some toys. The books are leather-bound and aged, the kind you find in antiquarian bookshops. The toys look old too. They are not the kind children play with nowadays but more primitive and covered in grime. The whole bed area looks ancient and also somehow tribal. I look through the books but they are obscure. From the “bedroom” I walk to the far left corner of the room where I find a strange installation, resembling a big messy nest. It seems to be made out of twigs, hay and dolls. All the dolls are black, some are missing body parts, the whole thing rather ghoulish. In the opposite corner, there is another installation. This one looks like a huge poster calling people to a political event and advertising a green grocer at the same time. The date is several decades in the past and the style very primitive and naïve . The centre of the room is occupied by a coffee table, surrounded by chairs, armchairs and a futon. I like one of the chairs – the one matching the futon - and decide to take it. I fold it and it turns out to be rather light. I walk around the flat looking for more things I could take, but there are few. There are a lot of items that are very bad quality or really ugly.
My mother sees me walking with the chair.
'What do you need that one for?' she asks.
'I wanted to get a chair like this one from Ikea anyway, so I might as well just take this one, it's free. This flat looks like it was abandoned...' I want to say: 50 years ago, but someone, I think it's my mother again, interrupts me saying '...less than an hour ago.' She tells me that there is something in the oven and the person who lives here must have just popped out for a short while and will probably be back in time to take it out.
We realise that the flat is not abandoned at all and that we have to leave as quickly as possible so as not to upset the occupants, whoever they might be. Taking any of the stuff I gathered is out of the question of course, but there is no time to put it all back the way I found it either.
I wake up with an unpleasant feeling caused by both the realisation that I've been rummaging through someone's private belongings, which they are going to soon realise, and the weirdness of the place itself.
