I awoke early this morning with one obsessive thought filling my mind. I simply must have a new tea caddy. A purple one. Like those pregnant ladies who develop unnatural cravings for tiny, bite-sized chunks of coal, I, too, yearn strangely. But in my case it isn’t pregnancy. We are moving shortly, and you might say I am ‘big with house’. All sorts of items need renovating or replacing. For several rackety, toddler-infested years I have made do with old, dented kitchen canisters – mine are still in shades of post-war cream, which just shows how much I deserve some purple ones. My kitchen cloths have developed gaping holes. (It is a nasty sensation to grasp at a dripping dinner plate, plunge through the gathered tea-cloth and find one’s self drying up with the palm of one’s bare hand.)
Bath towels, too, are no longer super-absorbent; some are not even slightly absorbent. In fact, our household linen generally is on the skids. My family wake up criss-crossed with seam-marks from sheets turned sides to middle and top to bottom. ‘I’ve heard of patchwork quilts,’ they say, bitterly, as they unthread themselves from their bedclothes. I admit I’ve left one or two replacements a trifle on the late side but, with the move in view I’ve hung on. ‘We can all have new colour schemes when we move,’ I cry. ‘We really have made do for long enough.’
I am considering a soft pinkish-fawn wild rose pattern for the new kitchen walls. This may be going against current trends, but I feel the need for a pinkish rosy background more than most. Strange how our colour choice relates to personality and, perhaps, to the stage one has reached in one’s life. While I collect patterns of quiet, backwater browns and pinks and beiges, Anna has her own, ten-year-old ideas.
‘Mummy, what I’d really like is mauve and lime-green and orange. Sort of mixed,’ she says. She then goes on to tell me, in great detail, about all the weird schemes her friends have, and how they can leave their rooms as untidy as they like. ‘And at Joanna’s, you can’t even see the floor for toys!’ she adds with a flourish.
Well, it’s not going to be like that at our new house, I tell her. No, we are going to live peaceful, uncluttered lives with simple colour schemes. Good new bed linen and other replacements will be in calm, wholesome colours.
While I make a start by weeding out and replacing limp old cushions and pillows (the new pillows will settle down soon, I tell everyone, as we lurch about with stiff necks) my family looks ahead with mixed feelings at the prospect of The Good Life.
Then I take a long, hard look at the living-room settee. ‘I know a marvellous man who re-covers settees,’ says a friend of mine. I contact him by telephone and he says he’ll be round with his swatches this evening. For some reason I expect upholsterers to be elderly and on the small side. I open the door to – well, you think of your current hero, and double it. He is exactly what would turn up if we all fed our deepest thoughts and yearnings and measurements into the computer and pressed the matchmaker button.
‘You have a well-made settee,’ he says, in a low, pulsating voice. ‘I have?’ I gasp, blushing and twisting my legs around each other. He stands tall and looks down, down, down into my eyes. He is unsmiling, commanding. His sideburns are just flecked with grey. I can’t swear to it, but he may be tapping a riding crop against an elegant leather-booted leg.
‘Have you anything special in mind?’ he asks, flinging down his swatches. ‘Well, to hell with recovering the settee for a start,’ I am about to scream faintly. But then my daughter’s voice breaks in.
‘Mummy, could we have it redone in this?’ she asks. She has found a shade of luminous cyclamen in one of the sample books. The telephone rings, and it is my mother, telling me to choose a sensible colour that won’t show the dirt. The telephone rings again, and this time it is my husband telling me that he’ll be home soon, and if that settee chap turns up, tell him we want something hard-wearing.
I return to everyday life with a bump, and our ravishing visitor leads me gently (deeply, pulsatingly, etc) towards the sensible-dark-brown-hard-wearing pattern range. Eventually he leaves – I’d like to say leaping astride a milk-white charger but actually he has a blue truck. ‘His wife was waiting outside. Did you notice her?’ says Anna, staring at me steadily.
Ah well! At this stage in my life I must just be content with new colour schemes. I get out the carrier bag full of furniture brochures and little bits of wallpaper. I close one eye and hold the strip of pinkish fawn kitchen vinyl at arms’ length and concentrate very hard.
Never mind soft backwater colour schemes, for peaceful uncluttered lives, I am thinking. No, what we need is zing. Our décor shall be young and bright, and mixed up mauve and orange if we feel like it. Which is why I leapt onto a train this morning and zoomed into town. It is why I am now home again, feet propped up and kettle on for a cuppa. Draped over the chair opposite are a rainbow mixture of new drying-up cloths, several sizzling bath towels, and, would you believe, a passionate puce roll basket. Already life seems a lot more colourful, and just as wholesome.
‘I think we’ll have poppy red sheets for our bed,’ I tell my husband. ‘What do you think?’ ‘Powie!’ he says, leaping up unasked to make tea. I can hear him whistling quite merrily as he reaches for the new purple tea caddy.