Life

Nuala McCann: We know the delivery driver so well now, he's coming for Christmas

The project to transform the garden is showing promise...
The project to transform the garden is showing promise... The project to transform the garden is showing promise...

CUTE little blouses are taboo since I have sworn off cheap fashion - oh the waste, the cost to the planet.

No new clothes - only second hand about here. The young wans say 'vintage', we say second hand.

But here's the thing. They sling on their granny's old mink coats like there isn't the whiff of an ethical dilemma.

Don't they remember the days when people who wore real fur got red paint thrown at them? It was the scarlet of the animal's blood.

The thinking is, explains a friend, that if said mink died 100 years ago, then better to recycle and slink in the mink.

As it's no to fast fashion about here, it is yes to home décor.

If I can't dress up, I'll dress up the hall.

As you don't have to climb into a lampshade or zip up a cushion cover over a roll of flab, it's win-win.

Operation 'transform your home and your garden' is where it's at. The joy of ogling power washers in the hardware shop...

William Morris of the Arts and Crafts movement said you should have nothing in your home that isn't beautiful or useful.

So the dump beckons for the entire contents of our home.

Still some treasures cannot be dumped.

The small china terrier on our hearth was a gift from my mother last year.

Mystery surrounds his origins. Small china terriers are not her style. They're not mine either. But since she died, he woofs at me sadly.

"You can't ditch the dog, it was a gift from granny," says our boy.

"Of course," I tell him, but in my head, I'm growling, "Thanks a pile, ma."

On the theme of interiors, chalk paint has entered my vocabulary.

Anyone for Farrow and Ball? Isn't Elephant's Breath so last year?

Clearly, this world does not come easy to me.

Still it's important to develop new interests now that the love affair with Scandi noir has died.

Crime in snowy wildernesses - where the heroines wear holey jumpers and the bodies are deeper frozen than a forgotten leg of lamb in the pit of the freezer - no longer appeals.

There's enough misery about without a grumpy Swede.

Mystery surrounds the origins of the small china terrier on our hearth, a gift from my mother last year. Small china terriers are not her style. They're not mine either. But since she died, he woofs at me sadly

And now that the world is opening up, people might visit your home and see the squalid truth.

Oh the shame that a cheap basil and lime candle won't cure.

We need to channel our inner Laurence Llewelyn-Bowens.

All those 'make your home or make your garden perfect' programmes are the answer.

On television, Irish presenter Angela Scanlon does Your Home Made Perfect.

She's lovely - she'd not sneer if you offered her two Marie biscuits buttered together with a mug of tea.

She introduces us to an architect - from NI, wouldn't you know - who can give you the perfect kitchen complete with a bath in it so that you can soak, sip champagne, gaze at your garden and - theroretically - stir your spag bol all at the same time.

Just lift your foot out of the bath, jam the wooden spoon between your big toe and your second toe and rotate foot.

I like the cut of that designer's jib.

I'm on the website, Etsy, so I like to think I'm a patron of the arts... buying handmade stuff from small businesses.

So far, I have bought a very large canvas of a cherry tree in full bloom that I can't hang up as there's no hook or wire attached.

I bought a lampshade featuring a crane taking off... the crane is lucky.

Also, I bought a lamp straight out of Aladdin's Cave.

It has a long stand featuring bubbles of bright sweetie coloured glass. One night when I switch it on, a fat green genie is going to come out and offer me three wishes.

"It looks like a bong, ma," laughed our boy when I unwrapped it after Thomas delivered it.

At this point, we know Thomas the delivery man so well, we're inviting him for Christmas.

I text my sister.

"Our boy thinks my new lamp looks like a bong," I say.

"What's a bong?" she texts back.

"Now we are sixty," I text her.

But it makes me laugh. That and ma's china terrier on the hearth cocking an ear at me. It could be worse - he could be cocking a leg.

I raise my trendy balloon glass of gin to him.

"You're home and dry, mate. I can never ever ever ditch you," I tell him.

"Here's lookin' at you, kid."