A carpet and a christening
As Christmas approaches the efforts to make the house warm and respectable gather pace. Latest instalment – a carpet. Yes, the very item of decor I thought I’d go the rest of my life without having, I’ve just dropped a significant amount of money on. The house has lovely old floorboards which I have sanded and oiled, except in the front room, where 170 years of sea-soaked air have rotted the boards. I inherited bare plywood covered by a carpet I could rip in half with my bare hands. For the last couple of years the ply has been painted with grey floor paint and sort-of covered by a rug. But temperature issues and noise issues have forced me to replace it with this:
Trend alert! Soviet wallpaper
Well sort of. An acquaintance of ours is moving into a do-er up-er and sharing on FB pictures of the radically mismatched 70s swirly carpets, a different pattern in each room. Same with the wallpaper. Looks like a set from the Albert Square B&B. And you know what? While she’s getting busy with the steam […]
Going inside…Peckham Liberal Club
In the Trump Slump I’ve let myself read far too many terrifying articles from knowledgable historians and bleak-world forecaster John Pilger, which I don’t recommend doing (apart from this one by Joan C Williams). You may have too. Anyway, amid the thousands of articles on ‘how to keep carrying on post Trump and Brexit’ etc etc […]
Oh man…
…what does one say? All this and Leonard Cohen taking his leave of us too. As I listen on the radio to a discussion about the failure of the left-leaning media, I’d like to bring your attention to an excellent piece on The Guardian. A piece which demonstrates that properly paid journalism still has […]
1830s surrealist Russian fable, The Nose
I stumbled across Russian fable The Nose, by Nikolai Gorky, at Donlon Books last Christmas and bought it because the book itself was such a beautiful object (and is pink and green). The story turned out to be very funny and you can whip through it swiftly, but in a satisfying way. It begins with couple Ivan […]