Monday March 10th – The Most Depressing Wardrobes in the World

I took a load of things to school for the story sack lady again today.  Jason is hysterical with delight that I am finally relinquishing books and toys to someone else’s care.  We could probably move a very small lodger into the loft now if we so desired.  Although I have no idea which kind of vertically challenged lunatic would want to live amongst our chaos.  Whoever it is you can be almost sure that if they volunteered we would be highly dubious and reject them out of hand.  They would clearly be mentally unhinged.

My pack rat ways are hard for Jason to live with, despite the fact that I know he still has those mis-matched Austin Powers shot glasses in a drawer somewhere.  The question there would be, ‘why?’  The only reason I’m letting him get away with it is because he doesn’t mind not having them out on display and they’re very small.  I’m very lucky that I didn’t find a husband with a penchant for glass coffee tables in the shape of wagon wheels or velvet pictures of Elvis Presley in brass frames I suppose.  We would have had to buy two terraced houses and live next door to each other.  I would visit wearing sun glasses, or some kind of blinker system.

When I first met him he had his own house, which was minimally furnished, but not bad for a boy if you know what I mean.  Key advantages were; a) no pictures of naked ladies, b) no floral prints clearly inherited from his mother when he moved out of home, c) no obssessive collections of things that only a boy could love, proudly on display in specialist cases, d) no weaponry, e) no live stock, intentional or otherwise and f) no cherished pieces of furniture that couldn’t be lived without.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

My brother has a house of his own, which he rarely visits, because it is much easier for him to live with my mum and dad.  His house is more of a bolt hole in times of crisis, which in his case consists of when my dad’s sister comes to stay for a fortnight, or when mum and dad are cooking food he doesn’t approve of for tea.  In his house he has a collection of rather tasteless pictures of nude ladies on his bedroom wall.  This is fine.  It’s his house, he can do what he likes within the confines of those four walls.  My only complaint was that one day when I lived nearby, he called me up and asked me for help with changing his bed sheets.  He hadn’t lived there long and thus far had never had to struggle with the indignity of trying to wrestle a duvet cover onto a king size duvet alone.  It’s not an easy job at the best of times.  I am good at it because I have had many years of practice, but I do sympathise with the novice or amateur bed changer.  I went round there in the spirit of sisterly amity, to help him out.

I had Tilly with me, who was about two years old at the time.  We hot footed it up the stairs.  She took one look at the biologically rather graphic ladies, sat down in front of them and continued to bombard me with questions throughout my rather hurried bed changing lesson.  To say I was distracted was probably the understatement of the year.  It was much how I imagine being on Mastermind would be when you are fully aware of the fact that you are being filmed and the lights are beating down on your already sweating scalp.  I have always determined to answer my children’s questions about such matters frankly and fully to the best of my ability and their levels of comprehension.  After twenty minutes of this, my brother was tongue tied and bright red.  It served him right for not covering them up with a handy bed sheet and saving me from trauma.

When I first moved in with a boy he insisted on bringing his collection of model guns and home made num chucks, the macrame pot holder he had made when he was ten and never dusted since, and some spiderman pyjamas he had had since he was seven.  It boded no well, and it was no surprise to anyone that after eighteen months of trying to dust a lot of nasty macrame covered in cowrie shells I flipped and moved out.  I am the first to admit that my taste is not everyone’s cup of tea, but at least I dust my own knick knacks.

My mum and dad have diametrically opposed tastes in almost everything you care to mention.  Their house is decorated in a very eclectic fashion and it is easy to see who has chosen what, or in the case of wallpaper etc, who has won that battle.  My mother has highly eccentric taste, verging on the bohemian, and I would love to give her a house of her own to decorate as she sees fit, along with an unlimited budget.  I would be very curious indeed about the end results.  The only thing that one could say for sure would be that it would be highly individual.  It could go one of two ways within that broad outline category.  It would either be utterly fabulous and she would start a trend that would sweep the nation, or hideous to such a degree that she would have to become a hermit because nobody would visit her voluntarily.

My dad just has hideous taste.  He likes things like vinyl blown wall paper and beige.  He painted the living room Chinese Yellow, which turned out to look like dog wee in the snow, and after six weeks had to change it because even he couldn’t live with it.  He likes fitted wardrobes.  He won’t let my mother take a sledgehammer to the ones in their bedroom.  The only thing he has allowed her to do is to paint over the gold trim and change the gold door knobs.  She painted everything institutional grey, which was a bit weird.  Even she admits it looks a bit weird.  Now she’s even more determined to take a hammer to them.  Unfortunately my dad hasn’t been away recently so there has been no opportunity.  Maybe she thought that the grey would be so horrible it would tip him over the edge and he would allow her to destroy them.  Sadly it didn’t work.  They probably have some of the most depressing wardrobes in the world.  It’s not a claim to fame everyone can make.  Still, at least they’re not bronze smoked glass, which someone had in a house we went to view last year when we were looking.

I’m not a huge fan of vast expanses of mirror at the best of times.  Mirrors above the bed are creepy and a bit Peter Stringfellow. I have never understood the appeal of being able to watch someone’s hairy arse wave up and down in a rhythmic motion, no matter how beloved the arse in question.  When Jason and I first went to Las Vegas we stayed at the MGM Grand.  It was billed as a ‘modern’ room.  The modern room consisted of floor to ceiling mirrors everywhere, including the bathroom and toilet.  It was a hideous experience.  I had been travelling for about eighteen hours by the time we arrived.  I was hot, sweaty, knackered and in need of a shower.  I stripped off and nearly fainted in shock.  The lights were those harsh shop changing room lights which accentuated every crack, crevice, line and defect and I was reflected infinitely on every surface in the entire room.  It was hell.  I covered up and whimpered under the bedclothes.  Luckily the bathroom door fell off in Jason’s hand after we’d only been in the room for about ten minutes.  It gave us the perfect excuse to demand a new room with minimal mirrors and we moved out the next day and went to the Bellagio which was much more tasteful and discrete.

Anyway, to get back to the day in question m’lud.  Jason had worked all night, so spent most of the day in bed or working from home not being disturbed.  Oscar and I took the girls to school and came home to recover.  This involved reading lots of books and crawling around on our hands and knees on the living room floor looking for something.  I still have no idea what it is we were looking for, but Oscar was incredibly enthusiastic and I don’t want him to grow up thwarted, so I joined in.  By ten thirty we were both on our knees with exhaustion, and covered in dust. He went for a nap and I sorted out some paperwork in a desultory fashion.

I went to Borders for a late lunch with mum and Oscar, and Oscar got a toy Ninky Nonk (the train from In The Night Garden) as his Easter present.  He doesn’t know when Easter is, so he got to play with it straight away.  As it was, he loved it in the shop and drove it all over the place.  Once he got it home he hauled it up onto the sofa and threw it off with a mighty and gleeful crash.  It has lain on the floor ever since, abandoned and ignored.  Such are the ways of small children.

My Emma Bridgewater bowl, which was the children’s mother’s day present to me arrived today.  I love it.  It is really beautiful.  I collect the Black Toast pattern, which is going very slowly.  I will probably have all the things I want by the time I’m eighty, by which point I won’t care a toss about it and will probably be sucking juice out of a tupperware beaker and clicking my dentures.  The children will hate it and give it all to a charity shop, and it will all have been in vain.  Such is life.  In the meantime I am relishing my bowl and have currently stuck a pineapple in it for effect.  The effect, it has to be said, is rather strange, but there you go.

It is actually a mixing bowl, but I am not in baking mode yet this week. I don’t want to put the bowl away, because it is giving me great delight to see it.  Consequently the pineapple is more of an excuse rather than a deliberate use of the bowl.  The children already have their beady eye on it, and are making ‘cake’ type noises whilst coveting it from afar.  I have put my foot down.  They can have the plastic bowls, and I will have my breaky bowl.  That way if I break it I only have myself to blame.  If they break it, the pineapple will come in for another use which I will only regret later, so it’s best to avoid that scenario altogether.