“The one thing you can always rely on,” said my father, “is noodles.”

He was, in a way, right. Noodles were always plentiful round here. Those brittle little briquettes of frizzy moulded umami goodness. If there was nothing else left in the shop, there would still be noodles.

And so my father, ever the inventive sort, took it upon himself to rebuild our crumbling home with this plentiful, cheap sturdy, regular-shaped building material. And it was beautiful, and magnificent, and strong, and perfect. And so we lived in our house of noodles for a good three months. Right up until monsoon season. And then, soggy, salty but full, we went back to the drawing board.