Built in 1967, it was a classic example of a well-designed house from that era. Spacious, with wide, large-paned windows, it
had frosted glass in the front door which was sheltered outside by an open
flat-roofed porch. There were glazed
interior doors downstairs, the kitchen was big and square, and the upstairs
landing so broad that it could almost have been a room in itself.
I was only three (and a vital half) when we moved in, but some memories of the first few days there remain intact: the shock discovery
of a hole in the corner of my bedroom floor which had to be fixed by the
builders before the carpet could go down, and Mimi’s anxiety at being in a strange place for the
first time. Poor thing shat in a kitchen
cupboard, but at least she didn’t use the hole in my bedroom floor. Mimi was the
cat, by the way.
Soon after we moved in my mum put her design stamp on the place: parquet flooring under three matching squirly-patterned rugs in vivid shades of green and yellow, the cylindrical linen
lampshades on sculpted clay bases, and her own framed oil painting of a sunflower on the wall opposite a print of Picasso's Blue Nude.
The living room curtains were an exotic shiny
gold, and the kitchen curtains - I’d have those kitchen curtains now if I
could. They were wonderfully 1960s, with
scratchy black line illustrations of domestic objects – kettles and teapots and
vases, I think – against a textured, copper colour background. Gorgeous.
On every flat surface downstairs there were ceramics, wood-carvings,
sculptures and pot plants, and the focal point in the corner was a Monstera
that was taller than my dad. Mind you,
he was only three foot eight. (No,
no! He was nearly six foot.)
There was a rather exciting cupboard under the stairs. Well, it was exciting when I hid in it –
horrendously scary when I accidentally got shut in it. It
smelt of polish, and at various times over the years it housed a stringless
violin, a cricket bat and some badminton racquets, the powder-blue upright
vacuum cleaner, my mum’s honey coloured camel-hair coat, a dusty bottle of Cointreau (no idea why) which I'd sometimes go in the cupboard to secretly open and sniff, my sister’s long black
PVC platform boots, and my navy blue anorak with its narrow decorative trim. We had a groovy coat rack on the inside of
the cupboard door (which I took with me when I moved out, having transformed
the spheres into eyeballs with my paintbrush.)
I think you can buy repro ones now.
I can picture the wallpaper in my bedroom, with its repeated motif of
large bright poppies, primroses and violets.
They were comforting, familiar images, like floral guardians, watching
over me kindly as I looked up at them when I was ill, which as a child I
frequently seemed to be. Later my pride
and joy on that wall was a big colourful map of the world. Later still it was a poster of Donny
Osmond. And then a Paul Simonon centrefold. And then a
wonderful Nosferatu film poster, a picture of Lydia Lunch and an article on Bauhaus from the NME, etc. You get the idea. The only permanent adornments to that wall were the hard, dry remains of the Blutac.
The one problem with that room was the carpet. My parents had thriftily decided to re-use
some from the old house; it was a dark shade of red, with harsh black linear
patterns. I suppose mum thought it
picked out the scarlet of the poppies on the wallpaper but I hated the colour. I also had a – fairly understandable – phobia
about decapitation after I’d seen something on the telly about Henry VIII and the Elizabethan penchant for beheading, and I started having terrible nightmares about heads
being chopped off, which somehow linked themselves to the dark claret
carpet. There was no doubt in my mind
that it was red from the blood, the blood from the headless bodies. If I could have changed one thing it would
have been that, erm, bloody carpet.
In my teens I did get the chance to change it and opted unwisely, in that typical folly-of-youth way, for a pale cream one,which didn’t fare too well
under the frequent spillage of green nail varnish, various lurid hues of eye shadow, hot
cigarette ash and crisps. At least my
make-up stains didn’t show up quite so much on the bathroom floor which, by the
seventies, had been changed from grey lino to purple carpet tiles. These went well with the dark purple
wall, but not so tastefully with the pink suite.
At the same time, my sister painted her bedroom in contrasting
shades of lime green and chocolate brown, which set off her Ché Guevara and
Black Sabbath posters beautifully. And
mum hired Mr Dunstan to decorate all the downstairs walls in a fetching shade
of mustard. I don’t think there was any
such thing as subtlety in the seventies.
I’m always dreaming about that house, so vivid is its feel, so deeply entrenched in my
subconscious; but I was set off on today’s
particular mental visit when I heard about a tip from a creative writing course
for exercising your mind and visualisation technique. The suggestion was to think back to a house
where you spent a lot of time in your childhood, and slowly imagine you’re
entering the front door and going around all the rooms, taking in all the
details. It’s amazing what it
unearths - I recommend it! And I so want those kitchen curtains, I just never appreciated them at the time.
