Chez moi II

Five years ago I wrote a post about my flat here in Stamford. 'Budget eclectic' was the name I gave to its appointments, and I lived with B.E. for five years until this year, when a busy summer and a modest but welcome windfall allowed me to improve the appearance of the place somewhat. I'm quite pleased with it, especially when I'm not wearing my new glasses. Putting these on brings everything from mellow soft focus into cruel, blinding clarity, revealing that the carpet is worn and forlorn and the paintwork could do with touching up here and there.

1. View from living room window

OK, cut the snark, I don't claim to be a photographer. It's a wet Monday morning in Autumn, the kind of morning when it's a delight to make coffee and take it back to bed with you, knowing everybody else in the neighbourhood is dragging their arse to work in the rain. From the photo you might think there's a steaming geyser out there, but that's just light from inside reflected onto the window. 

2. Commode

Up to last Wednesday this corner was occupied by the same chest of drawers as in the previous post. I had been intending to replace it for five years. My native Yorkshire dialect has the useful verb to thoil. Used in the negative, this means 'to be sufficiently in funds to purchase an item, but feel unable to justify the expenditure'. 'A were goin to get a jar o piccalilli in fert tea tonight' you might say, 'bur a cunt thoil it'. So I couldn't thoil a new chest of drawers until last month when I had to admit that the old one did not look quaintly distressed, but utterly panic-stricken. Anyway, I'm pleased with this one. It makes me feel more like a grown-up and less like a kid playing at house in the garden shed.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness... Actually, they're Waitrose 'ripen at home'. They usually stay hard as billiard balls for a week then go off overnight, so I don't expect to get to eat them. I think they look pretty, though.

3. The west-facing wall of the main chamber

This is where I'm lying right now, midst banks of sparkly Indian mirror-work cushions. Been intending to buy some for about thirty years. No selfie. Not since I got my new specs and faced the truth. (I'm still reeling.)

4. Gauds, conceits, knacks, trifles.

I am attracted to New Agey tat: joss sticks, crystals. tumble stones, crap like that. I suppose the fascination can be traced back to the second play I directed at school when I was 17, and searched the shops over the rehearsal period for anything that could be associated with 'magic'. At the closing of my Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon, Titania and the fairies passed through the auditorium, pronouncing blessing on the audience whilst asphyxiating them with Maraschino Cherry incense. (Why that sickly honk? Why?) This was when Richard Ridings gave Huddersfield his Bottom, and I went on to achieve obscurity.

Tall thin bottle (one of a pair, c. 2013)
that had posh vinegar in it.

Marble eggs I bought ages ago on Hydra,
because the night before I'd dreamed about marble eggs.

Himalayan salt lamp. Christmas present from my niece
and nephew.

Bud vases I accidentally 'distressed'
by chucking them in the washing up.

5. That sodding fireplace.

What can you do with a fireplace like this? The landlord allowed that it is not a thing of beauty and said he would be happy for me to rip it out, but would leave it up to me to repaint the room after. Instead I decorated it like a Christmas tree with the sort of odds and sods mentioned above. By candle light it doesn't look all that bad. Honest.  

The glaring white light is actually ruby red.

6. Posh new lamp.

New reading lamp, made in India. The lacquer bowl I bought ages ago from a very friendly Vietnamese girl that used to have a stall on the High Street. She extolled it to me: 'It got a lid, yes? No nice if you soup go cold, innit?' So it's actually a soup bowl, and to Vietnamese eyes it probably looks as incongruous there as a can of corned beef would.

7. O Cloacina, Goddess of this place...

A world first, a place but few have looked upon. I've done my best with it, I suppose, hiding the ugly plastic piping with greenery, but theres something clunky about the colour and round-shoulderedness of the cistern and wash basin. I dream of a bathroom you can linger in, drinking champagne in one of those gorgeous Japanese wooden tubs, a place where bathing is a delight utterly apart from the khazi. It is not to be.

In August I bought a shower curtain in vibrant lime green. The bathroom faces east and on hot sunny mornings the light pinged and ricocheted off the curtain as you opened the bathroom door and it was marvellously invigorating to bleary eyes. Unfortunately if the weather was overcast the damn thing seemed to suck out the light and it was like falling into an algae-coated frog pond. It had to go.

                                                                         
Pretty kickshawses to beguile the time while at stool:

Next door's bathroom.

Quentin Crisp, who always lived in just one room, said 'I don't know what people do with the room they're not in.' I am much of his mind. The other room now looks like the set of 'Steptoe and Son' and makes me think of Lodovico's line at the close of Othello: 'The object poisons sight, let it be hid.'

Chez Moi.

(Below was then. This is now.)

I bought a digital camera the other week, and I've been footling about with the bloody thing to try to get the hang of it. Bo's recent photoshoot of his tastefully appointed quarters inspired me to offer something similar. My style of interior decoration might be termed 'Budget Eclectic'. It is to be found chiefly among those who returned relatively recently to the UK with no possessions except a spoiled fat cat, after several penurious years overseas.

1. View from Living Room Window

That's right, it's a tree. I'm sorry about this; when I took it, torrential rain was slamming down from a sky the colour of pewter, and it looked magnificent, honest. Absolutely my favourite kind of weather. Anyway, you will just have to take my word for it.

2. Commode 

Chest of drawers in the possession of the author. Origin disputed. It may be from the Homebase studios, but a case might with some confidence be advanced for an Ikean provenance. The piece presents an interesting balance of tensions: opening the middle drawer will cause the front parts of the two lower levels to detach, and this human/artefact-artefact/human interface will give rise to intemperate language and on occasion blasphemy. The piece is shortly to be transferred into the care of Kesteven District Council, and will briefly be available for viewing at the municipal dump.

Cornball and teengirly it may be, but I just love fairy lights! This over-exposed photo doesn't do them justice, they're like rarely, rarely pretty?

Look, OK, the fireplace is fucking tragic, I know. It's nothing to do with me, though.



3. The other Side of the Fireplace.

CD tower ('Oak Effect', fools nobody) by Homebase. I have to put the bloody CDs somewhere. The only other shop in Stamford that stocked CD towers at the time I bought this was selling coffin-shaped things decorated with skulls, to be bought by weasly men with inky tattoos, rottweilers and bits of metal stuck in their shaven heads. Dried flowers by Miss Pickering of Stamford, an establishment most definitely not patronised by the men with heads full of studs.

4. The West-facing Wall of the Main Chamber.

This is where I am reclining right now, but I am not going to publish any of the gruesome mugshots I took of myself - no self-respecting queen d'un certain âge would dream of it. I'm waiting until someone else can find my best angle, if I still have one.  

Same again, please.

5. Mugshot

This was taken by my friend Yorgos in Greece a year or two or three ago, but I haven't changed. Well, I mean, I'm not actually still wearing the same jumper and socks, but I don't look any different, apart from a better haircut.

6. A propos of nothing

US Christer Gospel singers communicate their joy in being saved.