Opinion

Anita Robinson: I'm afraid my lack of effort in home maintenance lowers the tone of the neighbourhood

"I don't do exteriors"
"I don't do exteriors" "I don't do exteriors"

During this extended spell of fine weather I’ve been sitting at the window reading the daily papers and sporadically watching the Man Over the Road maintaining his property.

He is indefatigable, out there for hours at a time. His drive is weed and moss-free; his lawn like velvet, his gutters pristine; his perimeter wall and windowsills two coats deep in dazzling white, applied annually. His neighbour, the Other Man Over the Road, is always up ladders improving things.

I don’t do exteriors. The late Loving Spouse wasn’t that keen on doing them either. We specialised in lowering the tone of the neighbourhood. Now I rely on a valuable network of female friends for the phone numbers of reliable tradesmen who do things. Trouble is, they’re much in demand and you have to take them when you can get them.

Currently my life is on hold. I’m waiting in for the much promised painter, who, at the time of writing, hasn’t arrived and cannily turned off his mobile. Meanwhile, the entire contents of my kitchen and futility room repose in cardboard boxes in the garage, the dust sheets are down and I’m sustaining life with a kettle, a toaster and a microwave.

I could of course acknowledge the concept of ‘spring cleaning’ by turning out one or more of the crammed-to-capacity, contents-forgotten 29 drawers, several of which haven’t been opened for years, or, come to think of it, the many boxes of equally unremembered stuff concealed under the spare beds – but the spirit quails.

I’m notoriously weak-willed when it comes to throwing things away. The last time I tried it I wasted hours sorting, reading, remembering and depressing myself. I think the only thing I dumped were old Christmas cards. Besides which, I must settle on paint shades for the kitchen and futility room before the painter arrives. For anyone else this would be an unalloyed pleasure. For me, it’s a blinkin’ nuisance because I want both re-painted in exactly the same colours they’ve always been.

I have several colour brochures to choose from and am exhausted holding little colour strips against the wall at different times of day, in sunlight, in shade, in artificial light. Fifty shades of grey and none of them the right one. It’s a conspiracy. They’ve changed all the colour names to spite me. Then there’s the feature wall which is a soft golden yellow, also impossible to match. The unfortunate thing is, the seven-eighths empty tins left from the last re-decorating were all thrown out, (not by me,) so I can’t even get the mixing codes. I have a strong inclination just to sit here in dilapidated gloom and not bother. As Auntie Mollie used to say: “You’re never done with a house.”

And so it would seem. Fashions in home décor used to develop slowly. It took a generation to evolve from busy patterned wallpaper and brown furniture to Anaglypta, beige Dralon and shag pile carpet. En route there was the spindle-shanked discomfort of the sixties and the unfortunate excursion into psychedelia of the seventies, (the decade that taste forgot.) The days of the solid suite upholstered in ‘uncut moquette’ that lasted a lifetime were no more.

Then came the style gurus – the interior designers, some with more chutzpah than talent, whose malign influence was piped into our homes via television. A slew of makeover programmes convinced us it was ‘the look’ that mattered rather than the personal taste or preference of the homeowners. And so we were conditioned to letty-onny Scandinavian bathrooms, New England kitchens, French boudoir bedrooms, fake art, ‘shabby chic’ and ‘statement’ accessories. This last is directly responsible for the proliferation of wooden tulips, wire-mesh hearts, plaques inscribed with maudlin messages and tin chickens roosting on kitchen cornices in half the homes in the country. And scatter cushions and throws!

What’s this? A white van turning in at the gate? It’s the painter. You must excuse me, I forgot to remove the tin chicken from the kitchen cornice……