Taste explosion

Isn’t it coming on beautifully?

I think it is the loveliest conservatory I have ever seen.

Mark says that it reminds him of My Little Pony’s Princess Palace. He knows about My Little Pony because of when Lucy was little and was herself a Little Pony for quite some time. We all shared a bedroom at the time, which in any case was next to the kitchen, and so the music from the DVDs permeated all of life. To this day it fills me with a dreamy nostalgia whenever I happen to hear a few notes of it. Sometimes we would all be ponies, which made Lucy very happy indeed, and go for an evening canter round the garden, neighing as we went. It was a massive garden at the time. Number Two Daughter said that we were the most embarrassing parents she had ever come across in her entire life.

Mark has spent all day achieving the result in the picture, interrupted by complaining about his back hurting and occasional outbreaks of good taste. He keeps laughing and telling me that he loves me, which is always a sign that he is doing something against his better judgement. I don’t care. The children in the alley and I are in complete agreement that it is splendid. Also there is nothing wrong with having things decorated in gold, the Russians do it all the time.

I did not help today, mostly because I am the clumsiest person if not on the whole planet, at least in our house, and although sometimes Mark lets me help I know that afterwards he goes back quietly and re-does everything that I have helped with. He pretends he doesn’t but we both know that he does. Anything that involves accuracy or spatial awareness is probably best left to other people.

The conservatory is too important for me to be allowed to join in, so today instead I contented myself with making encouraging noises through the back door, in between setting my life in wonderful order.

I had reached one of those crisis points in life where I had begun to sink slowly under a horrible inexorable tide of incoming clutter. I was not waving but drowning beneath dozens of pairs of trainers, torn shorts, grass-stained cricket whites, Key Stage Three textbooks, ball gowns and tweed jackets, worn taxi jumpers and dirty flip-flops.

Today I Grasped The Nettle.

That is rubbish, by the way, I have tried it. Even if you grasp the stupid thing as firmly as an Enid Blyton hero in a short but encouragingly virtuous story, the leaves round your hand still scrape against it and sting your fingers, and the hairy bits on the stalk where you have foolishly listened to old wives stick into your hand and make you itch like mad afterwards. It is a very good figure of speech but a hopeless idea. Do not bother.

I do not mean that I hung about in the great outdoors clinging on to horticulture. I mean that I organised my life.

I did everything that I have been trying not to look at for ages.

I emptied our wardrobe. I hung jackets on nice broad hangers so that the shoulders would stay in shape and not have a pointy corner where the hanger from the dry cleaner once was. This mistake makes you look like you are auditioning to be an extra in an old television series called Dallas.

I arranged the shoes in tidy rows. I hung some of Mark’s shirts with his moleskin trousers and some with his corduroys so that when he is ambling around wondering how to dress himself I can just produce a pre-prepared set out of the wardrobe with a flourish, and he will be appreciative of what a good wife he has. I paired my own shirts with trousers that I thought would probably match, or at least not be too conspicuously wrong, and I threw away everything that we do not wear.

It is not easy not to be conspicuously wrong when you are allowed to buy things just because you like them even though you know that you have got no idea about tastefulness. I have got some bright purple corduroy trousers that I like very much but am not at all sure if I ought to wear with the mustard yellow shirt or perhaps the slightly-different-shade-of-purple shirt. There are the scarlet jeans that I think might look nice with the pink and mauve blouse but then again might not. There is no point at all in asking Mark. It would not matter if I was wearing a green spotted shirt with orange stripy trousers. If there was a conspicuous cleavage he would not notice the rest.

I emptied the terrible boot cupboard.

I paired the shoes and put them back neatly. I matched scarves with jackets and hung them on the right hangers, and I ironed our beautiful ball dresses and hung them in the loft, neatly swathed in bags  so that they will not fade or get dusty. You can’t see what is in the bags so I wrote labels and stuck them on. I felt very pleased with myself about this. Only a very efficient housewife has her ball gown starched and pressed in a labelled bag.

I put Mark’s cufflinks and his bow tie in the pocket of his newly-cleaned dinner suit and hung that in a labelled bag as well. I felt a little bit sad about this. We do not go to many balls, two in the last ten years, actually, and I don’t suppose the dress and suit will see the daylight again for ages and ages. I comforted myself with the reminder that I bought this dress a bit too big, so it does not matter if I get even portlier before anybody asks us to another ball. It is like leaving a little present for my future self.

There is no chance whatsoever that I will get thinner.

When I had finished my world was in beautiful pristine order. I have not actually done any of the mending that needs doing, but I have put it all together in a box so that I can just sit down and mend things if ever I am bored. Oliver’s school things are in his school bag, the shoes are all tidily on shelves, and my world is a contented place.

Also Mark is building me a princess palace to grow bananas in.

I wonder if you can get in trouble for having no taste if you live in a National Park.