#writephoto: Temple

This little story is for Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt.

She hated stately homes with a deep, visceral loathing. Ordinary people paying to trail open-mouthed around the set-piece rooms of some aristocrat’s family pile made her want to vomit. Didn’t they realise, she asked herself, that this kind of excess is exactly why some countries had revolutions? Didn’t they realise that the money from their entrance fees, plus the government subsidies was allowing some family of upper class degenerates to hang onto their mansion at the public expense?

She had refused to go into the temple of bourgeois privilege with Mum, Dad and little brother, and had parked herself in the mock temple to Minerva on the artificial hill opposite the sweeping colonnades of the main entrance. She sat with her Doc Martens on the stone balustrade and her back to the plinth where Minerva gazed stonily across the sheep-cropped sward.

“What kind of world do they live in?” she muttered. “I mean, what do these people do with their lives?”

“Absolutely bugger all,” came the reply from behind, about three feet above her head. Startled, she turned. Minerva winked a stony eye and returned to her stoic contemplation of the lawn.