When Mother Papered The Parlour

An archaeologist would be interested in my fingernails.  They contain layers of paint that tell (fairly accurately) what colours the house now sports;  dark green and yellow – that’s the kitchen – light blue – that’s the sitting-room – and green and white for the hall and stairs. Oh, and there’s residual bits of paste from the wallpaper in the front room.

I can hear Phil Harding on a future episode of Time Team. (He’s the one with the mangle-worzle accent, side-whiskers, a funny hat and who, judging from the amount of digging he does, must have been a mole in a former life.) “The exciting thing about these fingernails, Tony, is that we can reconstruct exactly what’s been going on here.”

To which Tony replies, with his engaging grin, “Decorating, you mean, Phil?”

Yes: Decorating or The Great Spring Ritual.  It’s not the tried and tested rituals of former years, such as covering yourself in leaves and being Jack-in-the-Green or even sacrificing odd goats on Salisbury Plain, but the mass migration to B and Q, Ikea and Homebase, to emerge triumphant with paint.  Mind you, although there’s not been much written in the Classics on decorating, they’re not entirely silent on the subject.  There’s the old song When father Papered The Parlour for instance.  Yes, I know it’s Mother in my case, but the principle’s the same. When Father papered the parlour, you couldn’t seem him for paste! Dabbing it here, dabbing there! Paste and paper everywhere.  Mother was stuck to the ceiling, the children stuck to the floor. I never knew such a blooming family so stuck up before.

And then there’s Shakespeare.

 Shakespeare doesn’t actually show us Lady Macbeth up a ladder with a tub of Trade White emulsion and a roller in her hand – in true Elizabethan tradition all the really meaty bits occur off-stage - but she must have done something of the sort:  “What!  Will these hands ne’er be clean?”  she questions frantically.  Macbeth, who’d obviously had enough after a hard day Kinging and Murdering followed by a guest appearance with Banquo in Most Haunted tries a bit of Male Common Sense.  (You can hear the tone of voice; Now, now, dear, don’t get so worked up.  Everything will be fine in the morning, you’ll see) advises her to Calm Down. 

 “Wash your hands; put on your night-gown; look not so pale.”  She refuses to chill though;  “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!” Well, no, but a bath with a bit of Radox and a couple of glasses of red wine work wonders. 

She obviously did her bit around the castle;  here’s a picture of here putting up a new light-fitting.

 

 

I explored new territory this week.  I tell you, armed with a pot of emulsion and a paint-brush, I’m like King Arthur with Excalibur.  Nothing fazes me.  I decorated the study.  Walk round that remark; think about it.  Yes, the study might be a titchy little room with a gas-heater which goes whumpf every time someone turns the hot tap on, but it’s my lair, it’s where I work, it’s knee-deep in paper, computers, printers and random stuff we can’t put anywhere else.  I’ve got bits of a Wellington Bomber in there (seriously – the Brooklands Museum were selling off chunks from a Bomber they found in Loch Ness) and a paperweight given for the Best Play at a Star Trek Convention in 1978, a 1920’s scent-bottle, a replica Magnum as used by Dirty Harry, four pairs of binoculars, an ancient crocodile-skin spoon box, zillions of photos of junior Gordon-Smiths in various stages of development, a Jolly Clam glove puppet from Florida and… Well, you get the idea.  It also contains the Gordon-Smith book collection. 

And the Gordon-Smith book collection, despite numerous trips to the Oxfam bin at the tip, is a sentient force.  It grows; it lives. It must – I’m sure I’ve nearly caught them at it a few times – reproduce.  It stirs, it moves, it seems to feel, the rush of life along its keel, as a poet said somewhere or other when a statue unexpectedly sprang into life and gave everyone a bit of a turn.  So the call has gone out; we’re having new bookcases.  And I’ll have to move all the books.  D’you know, I’m beginning to think Spring isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…