Cold Weather : Fashion Emergency

The fashion people at the Times informed us recently that the weather has got cold and this means that one's coat has got to Stand Out. You must have a Statement Coat; and the difference that makes a coat Statement rather than Ordinary is not distinguishable except by aesthetes (says the Times). A Statement Coat must give a knowing nod to current trends and therefore it may be "swooshy", shaggy, layered shearling in fake fur (not real fur, perish the thort) or be ankle length with asymmetric hem. I do not need to be an aesthete to see the difference between that and any of my coats. Mine are men's coats in the Smith signature long, straight and dark in colour look worn by all generations and genders of the Smiths of Hardham. Sourced from the charity shop. Max price £10. 

The Style Mavens on the other hand ramp up the Glamour Quotient. The fact that below-the-calf length coats are the thing at present is causing the poor darlings to have to tangle with all sorts of hem-length conundrums and I warn you now: Seventies Flares are going to be an Enormous Trend this summer (see right). These are 'Mistake Trousers' if ever I saw such a thing.

Time to leave the district my friends.

Here's a person who thinks, wrongly, that her clothing is going to keep her warm in the icy climes of latitude 51˚N in February. She has got her statement coat but she has forgotten she needs a woolly hat, gloves, vest, jersey and something MAJOR to cover the vast expanse of exposed neck. I bet she has not got a petticoat on under the flimsy dress either and she is going to FREEZE. She hasn't even put her arms into the sleeves of her coat. Perhaps she does not know how a coat works. Daft. She ought to let her hair down too. It is too cold to wear your hair up in this country except on certain days in the middle of July during years when there is a heatwave.

A few tips from the fashion ladies on what turns a mere mortal coat into a statement:

1. Colour. Avoid black or tan, go bright or patterned.     No. No. I stand by the dark plain hues of the standard Smith coat.

2. Collar. Go for fur, ruffles, anything flattering that makes the coat stand out and your face look pretty.      Do NOT do this. A modest, small, ordinary collar is what is needed, thanks.

3. Silhouette. Seek dramatic shapes and lengths.     Long and narrow, as I said.

4. Texture. Look for luxurious materials and contrast (cashmere/fur/silk/boucle/feathers/etc.)     No luxury at the charity shops of West Somerset I am afraid. Besides, those silks and fur etc. are too difficult to look after. Boucle and feathers, what ever THEY are, are not the Smith Way.

5. Fit. The coat must fit like a glove.     Er, no... The coat must be too big, so that you can wear about 30 layers of jerseys underneath it. This is Exmoor after all.

6. Construction. Make sure it’s lined, properly sewn and feels like it will last a lifetime.     Well, OK, if you can find such features on our budget (£10). And you mean 'feels AS IF it will last a life time'.

And Beware! Only wear velvet if it's in the form of red peplum jackets, and if you haven't got any PVC boots yet well what ARE you thinking of? Head-to-toe white outfits even the Times admits are impractical but still the catwalk ladies will not be seen without them.

Statement Boots:

(Left) The only statement these are making is "I am having a Footwear Crisis." They look like the sort of things surgeons wear for wading about in the gore on the operating theatre floor (without the heels though).

This boot (right) says "My leg is like an elephant's leg" - this winter's must-have leg. I thought Jimmy Choo shoes were meant to be desirable but this definitely isn't. Extraordinary. N.B: This boot is not only Statement, but also Key. Fancy! You will need one of these for each foot by the way.

A person in Porlock High Street told me I - I!  - looked elegant yesterday! In my Smith of Hardham coat with 10 thousand layers underneath and my unstatement boots and my hood up. It was pitch dark at the time and the person concerned is a known optimist but still. Elegant! Me! Perhaps she said "Elephant" but even if she did that means my legs at least are On Trend.

Even children are not safe.

Here is an outfit recommended for godparents to buy for their goddaughters. It looks like one of those pictures of when the child has endearingly got itself dressed and put on all sorts of ill-matched clothing. However in the Fashion Pages this passes as acceptable. From £212.

Make your Family like the one from the Poster

Fortuitous article in the Times

Following my remarks about that sickening poster, the Times have published a manual detailing how to make your family be just like the one from the poster - the family that does mistakes, and loud really well etc. Conversely, as sane persons, we may read the recommendations and do the opposite in order to avoid becoming like that family.

The article is about Raising Boys. Firstly we should point out that in England we BRING UP children we do not raise them. The Times has forgotten that it is published in England for English people. Raising of children is something carried out in America I believe. Next, it is a refreshingly sexist article that acknowledges that boys are different from girls. It is quite rude about boys though, saying that they are impulsive, pugnacious and more muscly than girls and the muscliness means there is less of their brainpower available for thinking and other clever stuff. (The brain is all used up with controlling their extra muscles). 

Here is what the Times thinks you (the parents) should do:

You must partake of what they call 'think-throughs', and 'descriptively praising' and 'reflectively listening to' your children. You must play 'The Go Game'. A typical Go Game activity is as follows: 'When I say 'Go' walk round the table twice, then sit down and tell me the name of 4 animals.' The child can only do it when you say 'go'. Switch roles for fun (sic).    Good God.

The boys' father must rumple their hair at every opportunity, sit next to them when they are playing with Lego, and wake the boys on schoolday mornings by sitting on their beds and chatting. Er... real boys are NOT amenable to this sort of thing on schoolday or any other mornings. "Get away from me you Freak" is the likely reaction to such overtures. 

Boys must be forced to shift their allegiance from their mothers to their fathers. Eh?? The parents are lucky if there is the slightest friendliness shown at all in my experience let alone any personal allegiances. 

The Importance of Sport: According to the article the father MUST ensure that the boy is good at football because all boys need to be good at football or no-one will like them. The father must practise playing football with the boy every day and not use words like 'Brilliant!' but say inane things such as 'You stopped that ball,' and other statements of the obvious. These are 'descriptive praise' and you should make such comments all the time. I would imagine the result of this would be that the child will stop listening to you altogether because it will realise that you are a loony who never has anything worthwhile to say. According to the Times though, the child will internalise it ('it'? what?) and begin to reinvent themselves. 'Reinvent themselves' is a very irritating and meaningless phrase which should be avoided.

Schedule playfighting for certain safe places and for times when an adult is present, says the article. Look, you are missing the point. Fighting does not work like that, and scheduling it can not be implemented. Sorry. Also do not use the term playfighting. All fights are to be undertaken in full earnest. The article does surprisingly admit that your children are going to be constantly hitting each other so don't bother having rules against it. On the other hand it recommends saying 'You didn't laugh when your brother made a mistake' as one of the descriptive praise observations which shows that the writer failed to have an effective think-through about this. It would be viewed as a challenge in most families: Hey everyone let's all laugh at our sibling. 

Bribe the children with Screen Time (allowing use of computer). This teaches them bribery. Excellent. 

Pretend you understand how they are feeling ("Gosh it's frustrating isn't it when you have to finish something you're enjoying" instead of "GET OFF THE COMPUTER THIS INSTANT YOU DISOBEDIENT CHILD") This makes them feel heard and attended to (apparently) and is an example of reflective listening. No. In fact it is condescending and will make them quite rightly loathe you.

If you have got a fidgetty child you should tell the child to make a fist and squeeze hard for 5 seconds. Cured! Also teach the children to sit on their hands. And - this is REALLY strange - train them to stop moving and freeze on a signal from you, eg. a hand held up palm out. Use this at unexpected times and give them permission to use the signal on you at designated times. By this means you will be able to establish your family's reputation as a bunch of utter weirdoes.

Read to your son even after he is perfectly capable of reading for himself and no longer thinks it's cool. (When did being able to read constitute something cool? It's just normal, like having 2 legs or a cat, or performing simple interpretive dance moves (not really. Interpretive dance is NEVER normal.))

Stand over your child while he does his homework. Patronisingly ask him what the teacher wants from him in the homework (this is a think-through) and keep interrupting him to give descriptive praise eg. 'You are writing slowly and neatly!' Actually in real life it is more help if you just sigh angrily when he gets something wrong, criticise his punctuation and spelling and tell him he is going to end up in the gutter if he doesn't try harder.

The article suddenly ends there, but there will be a whole BOOK of this advice coming out on 12th February, publ. Yellow Kite, £14.99. I shouldn't buy it if I were you unless you will be happy for your household to Do Hugs and Do Family etc.

Sickening Poster

This very repulsive poster has recently come to my notice, shown to me by my horrified son. I have made a riposte to it in order to offer some redress for the utter cloying imbecility of the human race here displayed.

AT OUR HOUSE

We do not give 2^nd chances to people who make posters like this. One poster and you DED.

We stamped out the practice of having said or sung Grace, long ago with an iron fist. Mother says Grace silently as a private matter between herself and Our Maker.

We HATE sentences like ‘We do real’.

Mistakes will not be tolerated.

No apologies in our house. Nous ne regrettons rien. Jamais.

'We do loud really well' is completely unacceptable. You might better say ‘We are a childish group of over-excited show-offs’

No physical contact permitted on premises.

We will DO in  your family, mate. A family that spawns posters like this deserves nothing less.

We do love Gin though.

I hope that makes you feel better, everyone.

Writing Letters in Anger

I have had cause lately to write to the Prime Minister about a matter of importance; Kingston Maurward College are proposing to build a housing estate at Lower Bockhampton in Dorset thus ruining a charming hamlet associated with Thomas Hardy.

Here is Lower Bockhampton - simply BEGGING  for 70 more houses to be built, as you can see.

I will here expound on the process involved in writing a letter when extremely cross.

First you should write a letter saying exactly what you really think. In my case the first draft is often not suitable for printing in public. Then try to do a toned-down version - this is what I wrote on my second attempt:

Cameron.

  I demand that you forbid immediately the building of houses which is proposed at Lower Bockhampton. Porlock is FULL of empty houses. So is the rest of the country. WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE HOUSES. Fill up the empty ones, for CRYING OUT LOUD. Then get the population reduced. This can be achieved by ensuring that

                                                      n(l) > n(e)      

         where n(l) = number of people leaving eg via dying or moving abroad,

         and n(e) = number of people entering eg via being born or moving over here from elsewhere.

   It's tremendously simple! Even a MP could understand it! 

   If you don't do it the promises and undertakings you made in order to facilitate your trampling your way to the top of the metaphorical dungheap which is Westminster are exposed as void. If you wanted to be Prime Minister in order to further your own devices you should not have pretended it was because you cared for the good of the country. 

    Do NOT give my regards to SamCam.

                      Mel

This is still quite rude. It needs to be softened further. The Right Honourable Gentleman will not read an overtly hostile letter.

Here is a politer version which still makes your point, but can actually be sent. Having written the earlier, cross versions, makes you feel better though.

Dear Mr Cameron, (While noting that Mr Cameron is not your dear by any means, you must take account of the conventions and address him as such.)

I request (not "demand") you to use your influence as most powerful man in the land (bit of flattery. They like that), to put a stop to the proposed building of a housing development at Lower Bockhampton in Dorset. The Dorset County Council has a shocking record of allowing insensitive development and they need to be curbed. You hold the whip hand here (more flattery) and it is your duty to use it.

This housing development is a symptom and you need to deal with it and then with the root cause which is the unquestioning acceptance that we "need more housing". (Leave out the capital letters and italics; they can prevent the letter from being taken seriously.)

  

There are huge numbers of empty houses and another single house should not be built until every empty house has been occupied, and no more people should be allowed in to the country unless there is a house available for them to move in to. I realise that it is cheaper to build new houses on previously unused ground ("See? I'm very reasonable. I am not a loony"), but we have to stop pandering to people who want to make easy money. In the long run it will be better for everyone if we acknowledge that the pleasant bits of our country do have a value which, although it can not be quantified in money terms, is extremely important for our national well-being.

If you stand by and do nothing about this housing in Dorset you will be letting us all down. Please act immediately. (You can't put in that stuff about the Westminster Dungheap either. MPs are very superior and do not take kindly to that sort of talk.)

Thank you. (More perfunctory and meaningless politeness. But at least you have still not sent your regards to SamCam)

          Yours sincerely,

                             M. G-AHLK (Mrs)

The letter will certainly be ignored and the houses built. If there is a halfpenny to be made, someone will make it. At least they will be able to connect Hardy's revolving body parts in their disparate graves, to some magnets and generate some electricity for the National Grid.

P.S. I did get a reply. An underling wrote and told me Mr Cameron was quite THRILLED to hear from me and has passed on my comments to the Development and Buildings Directive. 

So much for being the most powerful man in the land.

Investment Advice

Currys - a company ON ITS KNEES

If you have got any shares in Currys I think you should ditch them right now, or at least as soon as the dealing floor opens in the morning. This firm is not bothering to make the slightest attempt to satisfy the customers, and people are going to notice before long. I have noticed already.

Currys -  the Investors' Bane. Sell NOW.

I went to a Currys shop recently to try to get an iPad thing in the sales. Mistake! It was a place of utter pandemonium. Horrible music played loudly on tinny speakers; numerous deafening alarms and beeping noises sounded constantly and no-one made any attempt to stop them. Ignorant, gauche young men milled about, their Currys livery betraying the fact that they were supposed to be helping the customers. They were all chewing gum. Well they weren't actually - they must have been forbidden to, which is something I suppose - but you could see that they wanted to. 

We found some iPaddy items, but noted that they were displaying the normal (not sale) prices. We secured, with some difficulty, the attention of a gauche young man and asked him what the hell he thought was going on. He told us that the displayed prices were false; but he did nothing to rectify the shop's blunder. We sent him to a staff information post among the toasters and kettles (don't know why it was there) to find out whether they had got any of the particular iPad thing we wanted. (That took him ages.) Predictably, they did not. 

We collared another young man, marginally less gauche, who was in fact a Manager (V grand!) who said that we could have, he thought, possibly, a different iPaddy thing which might well be in stock but was not the one we had painstakingly chosen after many hours of online research. Dismissing the manager, we discussed what to do. All this was being carried out in conditions of extreme inconvenience due to the mega-decibel beeping etc and music. We decided to order the wretched machine online and have it sent to our house. 

While still in the shop we found a cover for the machine and went to buy it at the counter, where a charmless girl eventually, grudgingly, served us while making it clear that she resented our interrupting her courtship of a nearby youth of negligible appeal. I think if he likes her, their union will be miserable. He should look for a girl who applies herself to her job in a more responsible manner. 

Then we went to the Carphone Warehouse section of the shop, directed there by the Manager fellow to sort out getting Wifi. Here the ignorance of the youths available surpassed even that of the ones with whom we had already dealt. They knew NOTHING about setting up the Wifi, but they were willing to set us up with completely the wrong thing, and take our money for doing so. Luckily they were quite unable to disguise the extent of their stupidity so we made our excuses and left. 

When we got home we needed VAST gins to restore us.

Later, the iPad we had ordered online arrived. And behold! They had sent the wrong one! So, not only do Currys' actual shops not work, but their online facilities are useless as well. Many hours were then wasted on the phone to the Complaints Dept who were steadfastly reluctant to help. I demanded to speak to Lord Curry himself but they wouldn't let me. We were told to return to the House of Ignoramuses, ad Domum Ignoramorum which was bally MILES away. 

Back we went. Still as noisy, still populated by dolts. Spoke to Manager. He looked at the unopened box, found a not-visible-to-the-naked-eye product code, looked it up on his encrypted secret staff site and confirmed it to be actually the right item after all - despite it saying clearly on the box, the name of some other iPad item.

Informative, eh?  Curse you, Apple.

If you went to Tesco's to get some baked beans, you would not expect to have to look at tins labelled Beans, with an electron microscope to find a secret code which you then had to look up online to find out what was in the tin, would you? You would just expect there to be writing on a label which says, truthfully, 'Tesco's Value Baked Beans'. According to Manager Man, this is a problem they have with Apple packaging; all the boxes look exactly the same and just say iPad on them. They do not go into the niceties of whether it is an iPad, iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPod shuffle, Babbage Difference Engine etc.  Since this is the case Currys should make sure their Complaints Dept knows about it so that they can tell the customers where to look for the microscopic code to discover what is in the box.

Currys cares nothing for the sanity of its customers and I strongly recommend SELLING any shares you have in it because with service as bad as this the company is sure to founder soon. Also it is unkind of them to expose the gauche young men to the fury of the general public. While on to your stockbroker, tell him to get rid of your Carphone Warehouse shares which are equally worthless. 
Put your money in to Gin, my friends. 

GIN: Reliable stuff.

Great Expectations

I have watched many films of Great Expectations and disliked them intensely while all around me enjoyed them and think Pip wonderful, Miss Havisham an icon, Dickens simply marvellous etc. In order to write on my blog about why Great Expectations does not actually merit all this praise I thought I'd better read the book. Oh DEAR. WHAT a struggle.

At first I thought "Damn! This is good stuff! I won't be able to get a blog post out of this." My change of heart lasted about 20 pages before all my prejudices were happily restored to me. And here is why.

Now, I like Victorian prose. I like to read books made up of proper sentences, like Thomas Hardy books are. On this front Dickens is fairly sound - credit where due. 

BUT :

i) Pip! Oh SPARE me do. For a start Pip is a silly unmanly name. Mistake, Charles, take it from me. We women like a manly hero. I took against Pip in a big way early on in the book and subsequent events did nothing to bring me round. He is a total WEED in all respects.

We (the readers) are I think expected to like him for being fond of Joe, Herbert, Wemmick, and for feeling ashamed for being unkind to Joe; however it is easy to be nice about fine people like those and ashamed of behaviour like that; he is ungrateful and spiteful about Pumblechook, his sister, the bad Pockets, unaware that without them he would be grovelling the streets for his living and keeps on and on about their faults. He was jolly lucky to be fed and housed and does he not realise that ALL children are subject to being constantly asked to name the pluperfect of moneo and what 13 times 13 is. He seemed to believe that Mr Pumblechook was not normal in asking these things and that it was unfair and malicious. In my experience this is part of being a child and you just put up with it unremarkingly. [This is for you, infants: monueram; 169]

ii) Miss Havisham! What an unlikely character. No-one could have the will-power to carry on like that for years. What good did it do her? None. What harm did it do her traitorous intended? None. And she would have noticed after a while and realised it would be better to sue the cad for breach of promise instead of sitting around moping and sulking.

iii) Estella! Estella makes me ashamed to be of the same sex. Even a twerp like Pip would not have loved her in real life. She was, in the Minehead parlance, "a right cow".

iv) Coincidence Overload. The plot of this book is preposterous.

Finally,

iv) The last sentence of the book is incomprehensible which is unfair on readers who have ploughed through 443 pages of Pip's whining. Though if it made it clear the uncongenial pair were going to marry and live out their days happily I would be jolly cross - so perhaps it is for the best that you can't tell whether that's what happened or not. Either way, they are welcome to each other.

Below are some draft questions for G-AHLK Examining Board Great Expectations exam.

1. Pumblechook is a ridiculous name and most unrealistic. Why did Dickens give his characters such daft names?  Was it because

      a) he had a personality disorder that made him want to insult his readers by using names that would be more at home in books for pre-schoolers

      b) he suffered from a neurological condition that caused him to imagine that these names were perfectly normal

      c) he was lazy

      d) he thought he was being humorous

      e) people really had those sort of names in those days 

2.  List the ways in which Miss Havisham’s situation is unfeasible. 

3.  Explain why Great Expectations lends itself ill to film treatment.

Answers:

1.  a) is the correct answer because it is clear from all the attributes of his books – plot, characterisation, style, names – that Dickens wished to insult and offend his readers. 

     b) is wrong. There is no such neurological condition recorded in the history of neuropathology.

     c) Certainly Dickens was lazy and could not be bothered to think up realistic names. However a) gives a fuller explanation and candidates will be awarded only 1 mark for choosing c).

     d) is not the explanation. The names are not in the least bit amusing.

     e) is incorrect. No-one ever had or will ever have such silly names.

2.   Miss Havisham’s situation involved her sitting permanently among her years-old wedding feast wearing her wedding finery, bemoaning her miserable fate. There are a number of reasons why this would not have worked in real life :

     i) the food would have begun to smell very smelly quite early on in the proceedings

    ii) rats would have come and Miss Havisham would have been screeching her head off at the first sight of one

    iii) she would have been bored to tears after a few weeks of this

    iv) once she got middle-aged her dress would not have fitted any more

     v) she must have gone to bed every night and she would soon have started to feel pretty silly putting the wedding dress back on in the mornings

    vi) what did she wear while the wedding dress was in the wash? Doing the Laundry in the 19th Century took all day and there weren't any tumble driers to speed things along 

   vii) whoever was paying for all this nonsense would have demanded it had to stop

  viii) she would have got the worst pressure sores ever seen in the history of nursing, and many other medical complications associated with inactivity.

3. Great Expectations should not be filmed because:

                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 a) The protagonists are each given a single attribute, which then defines them and they show no other subtleties  - eg. Pip - a weed; Estella - a right cow; Miss Havisham - an old misery; Joe - can do no wrong; Pip's sister - horrible. This is rigid and unadorned. These simple, unnuanced characterisations cause actors to over-act in a most irritating way. For example, the Christmas meal early in the story is treated in all films as an opportunity for absurdly exaggerated behaviour by the cast and it annoys me. You might expect at least ONE of the directors to exercise a little restraint but no! They are unable to resist trying to make it funny, and yet they all fail, and fail catastrophically. Look, lads, it ISN'T funny and there's nothing you can do to make it so, so don't try.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

    b) Apart from this, the book has descriptive passages that are not demonstrable by any acting; they have to be read. They are the best bits. The book is just NOT SUITABLE to make a film out of.

Well, there you have it. I have spake. I apologise to you all.

A Horrible House much admired by its owner

Here's a house worth Lord knows how many million pounds, but I DON'T CARE! I don't want the beastly place so that saves me £Lkhmm! Aren't I lucky. So will you be when you see these pictures. I have put in a few comments in red, about my own domestic arrangements, for comparison. 

Insider Information: In the Times Saturday Magazine they always have one of these articles, where they go to some non-enitity's house and then write a fawning article pretending to think the house is marvellous. Here we have a French femme fatale's mansion de Paris.

"The place screams luxury," the journalist informs us. A bit cold and spikey, I'd call it (left). That thing that looks like a rug on the floor, is a mosaic. It is not nearly as pleasing as the Roman mosaic in Taunton museum and I bet it doesn't feel as pleasant underfoot either. I can recommend going to see that, and touching it to appreciate how lovely it feels, before they stop allowing such liberties to be taken.

Notice also the hideous light fitment which is fully in keeping with all the other nasty shiny decor in this most unwelcoming of entrance halls. The owner boasts that she has "brought the subtle glamour of a 5star hotel into our home".


Roman mosaic at Taunton Museum.
Shows story of Dido and Aeneas.
Infinitely preferable.

Our entrance hall is furnished with boots all over the floor, a coat rack BULGING with a thousand never-used coats, baskets awaiting collection or repair, the cat, long-forgotten homework, bills and empty beer bottles. Very homely.

This is called the Chill-Out Zone. The family must be midgets as that little footbath is called the Swimming Pool. This basement area also boasts a hammam, whatever that is, and a spa, massage room and cinema. "It's our fun floor," says the owner, proudly. "I don't want anyone getting bored. Each floor has something different to offer." 
We don't have a Fun Floor in our house. There's a ground floor with bicycles in it and some camping equipment and hammers and stuff like that. The 1st floor has a kitchen and an area with chairs, music stands, bookcases etc. and stacks of papers, some of them vital like passports and chequebooks. The top floor has a few cramped bedrooms of which those occupied by the younger members are so untidy that they are eligible for World Heritage status, and a bathroom where we all bang our heads due to the sloping ceiling under the eaves.

The dining room, which has a leather ceiling. I shall say nothing on this matter.
The walls are of alabaster. 

Compare the G-AHLK dining area, where every surface is covered in junk, the chairs are all broken and none of the plates match. We have got MUCH better paintings though and the wines are many and various.

Horrid uncomfortable kitchen. White marble throughout; no expense spared here. Slaves have been in and done the washing up etc., which is nice. It has the air, though, of a hospital treatment room where one might take bloods or administer some other nasty medical procedure. Perish the thought of whipping soufflés or roasting any peacocks etc. in there.
The mere act of making a cheese sandwich in my kitchen can make the area into a bloodbath where it looks as though an 8-course banquet for 40 has been prepared. Countless implements are employed. Crumbs, crusts, wrapping, plates and knives are left about, and other members of the family then enter and complain that there's no bread left.

What???? What is this (left)? A washbasin? A birdbath?

Well, - it's a very expensive alabaster vase water installation designed by the owner of the house. Hmmm. The alabaster may well "echo the material used in the dining room" but if I was going to spend that sort of money I would procure an early Victorian quince dish, or a bit of  Ming.

This picture on the wall is of a frightening tribesman with a machine gun. It is not likely to enhance your concentration when you sit below it for a game of chess. An inexplicable choice of artwork.

Look at that piano. They have covered it in silver foil; and yet they are proud of the fact. They also obviously NEVER play it. Real pianos have their mouths open and are covered in piles of music and the keyboard has every pencil in the house, stored along the upper registers. N.B. Grand pianos have the advantage that the floor underneath them can be covered with piles of music as well. This (shown) is a waste of a piano. There is an old bedspring on the sideboard behind the sofa. You'd think they'd have put that out of sight for the photographers. There is a bit of sheep fleece I think, next to it. VERY odd wall decoration above those. I think perhaps the artist was pulling A Fast One. Anyway, I'm not keen on it. As for the "crocodile-hide and murano glass back-lit coffee table", I have rarely seen a less practical item of furniture. In real life the glass surface would be all smeary and have coffee rings, and the greenery would be long dead. If we had such a table in our house people would put their feet up on it and get it all muddy, before breaking it to smithereens.

The house has 3 floors as well as the basement. There are 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, countless dressing rooms, living rooms for the children and silk rugs galore along with mother of pearl and ebony inlays, and more mosaics which get everywhere including into the kitchen. 

The owner said she wanted to create a feeling of warmth and comfort. I am sorry but despite spending £Lkhmm she has failed spectacularly.

Here is a charming interior: Coleridge's cottage at Nether Stowey. The rug perhaps a little ill-advised but apart from that it's delightful. Despite Nether Stowey's proximity to the International Alabaster Hub that is Watchet there is not a speck of alabaster to be seen.