Hotchpotch

Himself is in bed with flu so I have moved into a daughter's bedroom where I can spread out and read until the small hours without catching his germs or being moaned at.

I could happily stay in bed throughout the months of January and February, it's dreary at this time of year when the parties have finished and everything is drab and cold. I have visions of being like Colette and sitting plumped up with cushions while friends pop in for a chat. Steve of Urban Cottage noticed the grey bedhead in the Christmas Eve posting and Cro of Magnon's Meanderings identified it correctly as coming from France. (And Cro, yes, you can still buy flannelette sheets at John Lewis.)

The double bed in our room is also from France. It took us quite a while to find. Louis 15th furniture is famously curvaceous, and many of the beds that we looked at were frighteningly so, with jagged pointy bits all over the place. 

Our walnut bed is a little more restrained, and since it is decorated with a swag of roses, we had to buy it. Why the French don't love their furniture I cannot understand.

I love English furniture but it is expensive to buy. When I look around our bedroom I am aware that it is a complete hotchpotch, with prints from Japan and a battered old wardrobe from Hungary. Himself limed it and then I decorated it and added a poem that seemed appropriate for a bedroom.

Here we are all by day

By night we are hurled

By dreams each one

 into a several world. 

 Robert Herrick 1591-1674

The chest of drawers is English, bought many years ago when such pieces were thought old-fashioned. It is beautifully made, a sturdy, simple design. The only other piece of English furniture in the room is a chaise-longue, not photographed because it is currently hidden under a pile of discarded clothing! (I am in constant shock, amazement and admiration at the order and discipline of intent that the likes of Steve at Urban Cottage and Janet of  Gardener's Cottage bring to their homes.)

I was born into a very happy and individual home; to have described it as, 'shabby-chic' would have been very generous, it was rather chaotic! Below is a photograph of the bed in which I was born. It was old, canopied and curtained, with carved figures that were lifted down before the doctor told my mother to push. Sometimes on Sunday mornings all the family lay in it together and chatted. "Don't wriggle, Rosemary!" 

What chance have I to lead an organised life?