Shocking statistics reveal that since Covid 19 struck, some adults are spending six and a half hours (40 per cent of their waking day) watching television, videos or streaming services.
I totted up my own daily consumption of the media and hung my head in guilty shame. Does it count though if it’s only news and current affairs to which I’m addicted? It is after all, in these perilous times, one’s duty to be well-informed, even if thoroughly depressed by the information.
In search of comfort, reassurance and escape from the catalogue of governmental incompetence I go channel hopping in the heartening direction of antiques, salvage and restoration programmes, of which there are many. I do love the idea of something with a bit of history being restored, re-fashioned or re-purposed. I wonder if it would work for the Norn Iron Assembly? But that’s by the way.
I inherited the acquisitive gene from my mother who couldn’t leave well alone and threw out classic mahogany furniture in order to import sleek G-plan modernity. My father, an amiable man immune to passing trends, considered home furnishing her province, rarely voicing an opinion on the subject, which she took as tacit approval. Until the episode of the chair. His chair. It was old, but to him, beautiful, upholstered in walnut-coloured leather, worn and veined with creases, every dent, sag and scuff perfectly moulded to the contours of his body. For more years than I remember it dominated a corner of our living room to the right of the fireplace. One day he came home and it was… gone. In its place, a smart Parker Knoll wingback, upholstered in forest green. I’ll draw a veil over the ensuing row. Suffice to say that even when young, I had a penchant for drama. I remember running from the room in tears thinking, “I’m the child of a broken home!”
There was very nearly a parallel incident in my own just-married house when I came home with an elegantly refurbished Edwardian sofa and matching armchairs, precariously balanced on spindle-thin legs. The Loving Spouse, a hefty 14 stone, remarked (quite reasonably,) “You do realise if more than one person sits on this, it’ll collapse? That’s a suite for looking at, not sitting on.” And so it transpired. It still stands on the landing of the current house making a style statement, but never used. For practicality we bought a couple of leather sofas, comfy as well-worn slippers, which survived Daughter Dear’s rearing, the depredations of the cat and our increasingly weighty selves for many years.
My taste is for the old rather than the new. Today, ‘second hand’ is no longer a disparaging term. Now it’s called vintage, pre-loved or restored and increasingly popular – though it amazes me that people buy broken, damaged or ugly things just because they’re old. Quirky, beautiful or of sentimental significance are my only benchmarks. In a technological era the world’s full of stuff no longer any use to anyone in its current form. ‘Upcycling’ and ‘re-purposing’ have become the buzz words. Laudably, imaginative ideas abound, but I couldn’t live with fire-bucket lampshades, a wine-bottle chandelier or a respectable Victorian grandfather clock eviscerated and turned into a cocktail cabinet. Nor do I subscribe to the brutalist school of design that lays a lump of raw hand-hewn oak over a pair of cast-iron bootscrapers, calls it a coffee table and charges three figures for it.
There was a tall cupboard with a let-down worktop on television recently. I recall its double when young, in my grandmother’s scullery. Scrubbed down and painted duck-egg blue it went for £300. Charity shops, car boot sales, auctions, antique shops – people just want stuff. They throw out their own stuff to fill their houses with other people’s stuff.
My furniture is authentically distressed due to three generations of wear. Nearly every piece prompts a memory or association. Daughter Dear has already vowed when I go, to drag the contents of the house into the garden and set fire to the lot.
