Our prefab has five rooms, or six if you include the hall. Most other houses seem to have more, so it is no wonder that prefab dwellers have long been fascinated by the Biblical line "My Father's House has many rooms." ('Tubby' Lard's unorthodox reading of the text is that the Almighty works in the hotel industry.)
The front of Bath Abbey is dominated by two sculptures of Jacob's Ladder. The angels are shown flapping their wings in an upward ascent towards the heavenly heights. Look more carefully and you will notice that a couple of angels have lost their footing and are tumbling down the hierarchy of virtue. This is what happens if you go astray.
Hierarchies are everywhere, and that includes prefab estates. Take no notice of those who say prefab residents are all roughly (and they mean roughly) of the same status. The slick salesman who lives in the immaculate corner prefab says "au contraire!" This is someone who is never seen wearing the standard prefab string vest or drinking out of the standard prefab bottle of pale ale. His evenings are spent listening to Bach and mulling over the ideological differences between Jacobins and Jacobites. It was no wonder he was offended by the photo-journalist from the 'style section' of the New Yorker who published a picture of him in his sitting-room armchair under the headline "A British trailer-trash interior."
Working out just where our own prefab stands on the estate's Jacob's Ladder hierarchy is a tricky exercise. The old man only has one string vest, and has never had much of a liking for bottles of pale ale. When there has been plenty of work with Derro Enamels life in prefab number twenty-four looks "rather good" (a favourite phrase.) If there is a long work-less spell at home life gets less predictable. When the old man returned home after an exacting debate on the impact of inflation on living standards in the Golden Fleece he collided with the front gate (it has never been the same since) and our Capability Brown-style light green speckled hedge started looking a shade forlorn. Passing by Bath Abbey a week later I noticed that one of the falling angels had slipped down another rung.