Opinion

Anita Robinson: Home is where the heart is - and the inherited furniture

 The comfort of the familar: Letters, photographs, books ,clothes, shoes all evoke memories 
 The comfort of the familar: Letters, photographs, books ,clothes, shoes all evoke memories   The comfort of the familar: Letters, photographs, books ,clothes, shoes all evoke memories 

IT is inevitable in a place as small as Northern Ireland that your past catches up with you.

I was speaking at a charity lunch last week and the lady president turned out to be a childhood friend, not seen for years.

In her graceful introduction to my talk, she referred to the fact that we had been playmates.

"Playmates in the sense," she added with a touch of acerbity, "that Anita used to write plays and made us be in them." (Dear reader, I was ten.)

Afterwards, she produced an incriminating photograph.

There we all were in black and white - Elaine, Lorna, Little Maureen and me in fairy frocks - and Madam President Carol, aged seven, as a singularly mutinous-looking elf in a pie-frill collar and a Noddy hat.

She re-introduced me to the erstwhile Fairy Dewdrop, her sister Lorna.

Is my generation the last to keep things? I only ask because I still have the original script - handwritten on Basildon Bond for posterity.

It is highly derivative and eye-wateringly awful. I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder exactly. It's just that I can't bear to get rid of significant stuff.

Things like my first formal dress when I was the same weight as Audrey Hepburn and got my picture in the Irish News; the baby's Gingerbread Boy rattle (the baby is 36), the Loving Spouse's big sweater with the leather elbow patches and my first letter of commission from the BBC.

Letters, photographs, books, clothes, shoes, particular pieces of furniture, all evoke memories conjure up associations with people, places and times past.

I suppose it's the comfort of the familiar. Not that we keep our homes like mausoleums. We just believe in evolution rather than revolution.

An immutable and immovable part of my childhood was my father's old leather armchair.

Scuffed and shabby, it had the shape of him in it. He came home one day to find in its place, a smart Parker Knoll wing-back in forest green uncut moquette. What a row ensued.

With my juvenile taste for drama I immediately thought, "I'm the product of a broken home."

History repeated itself half a generation later. With my first year's broadcasting money I bought a spindly-legged Edwardian sofa and matching armchairs.

The Loving Spouse was less than enchanted. "Completely useless," he fumed, "far too fragile."

With my taste for drama, I immediately thought, "I'm the product of a broken marriage."

The suite is still on the landing. Nobody has ever sat on it.

There's a curious lack of sentimentality about the younger generation who, as far as I can see, jettison everything every couple of years and start afresh.

They're never done, renovating and re-decorating in relentless pursuit of change and current 'lifestyle' dictat.

Only entire 're-imaging' will do, so out goes every stick of furniture because it won't suit 'the look' - lamps, rugs, curtains, bedding et al, sold on eBay or donated to charity.

In come fabric swatches, carpet samples, the polka dots of tester pots for possible paintwork - debates and decisions.

I note that after decades of muted matt vinyl, wallpaper's back with a vengeance - bold, brash patterns reminiscent of the era that taste forgot, the seventies.

No wonder first-time buyers, nervously unsure of their tastes or talents, opt to buy showhouses as they stand, in all their inoffensive magnolia blandness.

A house is a machine for living in. It should reflect the personality of the people who inhabit it.

Should you favour a bathroom done up like a New England fisherman's hut or a miniature Greek temple, it's your own business, as long as that's what YOU like and not the whim of some style guru.

'Taste' is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Any room can be 'fun' or 'quirky' so long as you're not sacrificing functionality and comfort to fashion.

I'm happy among my bits of inherited furniture, each piece a memory of a place and a person I loved.

The rest the Loving Spouse and I chose together. All of these add up to the heart-warming total of 'home'.