You know you’re getting comfortable with living in a château when you no longer have to summon all your courage before negotiating the steps of its staircases. Any self-respecting ghost would have made an apparition by now, right? And then there’s the symbolic and dream meaning of a flight of stairs. There’s always the suggestion of a journey, good or bad, with all the doubt, uncertainty and disorientation that it entails. Something I can really relate to in this phase of my existence. Perhaps going up and down Lescure’s escaliers will help me figure out what’s next?

Thanks to our friend Willem I’ll have even more opportunity to contemplate the future chapters of my life in this manner. One excruciatingly hot day this summer, he woke up and announced he would build us garden stairs on an overgrown slope between the orangery and the orchard. The message is clear: it’s really time for me to step it up for life.