Acta Populi

Number I

Hello and welcome to the first edition of Acta Populi, the new and exclusive weekly newsletter for members of the paid subscription tier here at Potentially Interesting Towers. I’ve had my army of robot butlers sweep the west wing especially for you; they have dusted down the old ballroom and chased the rabbits and squirrels from the rafters. The old place is looking ship-shape and shiny once again.

All of which reminds me of the time, some 30 years ago, when my mother was the head housekeeper in some grand Elizabethan pile in Berkshire, England. It was very ‘old money’ - a great rambling house which was, like most of these things that still remain behind private gates and have managed to avoid being opened up for people to wander around and gawp at, an absolute shambles of a place. The family who owns it (and I won’t reveal who they are) were rich beyond measure, which immediately makes one thing of Downton Abbey. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the building went completely unused, with only my old mother and her team scurrying about, fighting losing battles against dust and neglect.

People this rich, living in houses they don’t need to open to the public to keep the wolf from the ruinously expensive door, don’t flounce about in ballgowns and tweeds - they wear mud-encrusted wellington boots, are followed by packs of perpetually hungry, slobbering labradors and swear like Irish fucking miners.

It was a fun place to wander around in, when nobody was looking, which was most of the time. One Christmas, the family buggered off to St Moritz or somewhere and left us with free range of the place, with the only instructions being not to take any more than twenty bottles of port from the cellar, which, the Lord (for he was a Lord, even if the old money was hers), reliably informed us should be enough for the four of us for a weekend. Especially as he said we could empty the spirits cabinet if we wanted to.

Happy weekend, that one.

Anyway, the point I am getting to is that one evening, we found ourselves up at the very top of the house, among the attics and the twisted floorboards of the haunted servants’ corridors, where I found, long dusted and anciently delicate, a rather unusual-looking flag. It looked for all the world like a flag of the United States, only instead of the usual smattering of stars, it had about a dozen or so of them, arranged in a circle. Nearby was a great chest which, when we heaved it open, was full of crackly old documents and deeds, many of which were rather rudimentary maps of what would go on to become Virginia.