Friday 18th November

As a child it was always curtains; apart from maybe the very rich I don’t think anyone had blinds at all.  You certainly didn’t see them in the shops, not that you actually saw curtains either.  You saw curtain material, and sometimes poles and cords and such-like paraphernalia but ready-made curtains were unheard of.  If you couldn’t sew yourself you had to pay someone to run your curtains up for you, or get some secondhand.  In Cyprus we had Drapes, rather than curtains; huge rich velvet and satin drapes that hung ceiling to floor, and matching, material covered pelmets with little fringes on, and huge tie backs again either embroidered or be-tasselled.  In truth I don’t think that these had been changed or indeed cleaned in decades, they were certainly never drawn, even in the evenings.  All the windows in our official residence had internal shutters that would be clattered shut at sundown.  I remember this because I was reminded of it in the short promotional film for John Lennon’s Imagine; Adrian and I watched it together on a tiny black and white television in his squalid Hackney flat, and as Yoko went around the room opening up white shutter after white shutter and flooding the bare white room with light, I exclaimed that we too had shutters in Cyprus, though I don’t think ours were white or full length either – but the film had stirred a memory which might have otherwise remained buried forever.  Or is this one of those times you are not sure if you remember it happening, or rather remember the moment you first recalled the memory.

In Putney we had the very same curtains for the twenty years or so I lived there, I don’t think that either Grandma or my mother could sew, and somehow it never occurred to either of them to replace these almost antique curtains.  Once, in a fit of spring cleaning, or maybe shame, I climbed on a stepladder and unclipped the hooks, and lugged them down to the launderettes and paid for them to do a service wash, then with my mother’s help we re-hung them, and I even tacked up a couple of drooping hems.  They looked cleaner but somehow looked a bit pathetic against the yellowing paint and even older wallpaper.

Edward liked blinds, he said they were more modern and cleaner, well – they were cleaner if someone (guess who) bothered to wipe them; I actually thought they were dust traps, but still.  So, we had wooden blinds throughout the house, and yes, they are modern and they can be slanted to adjust the light quite nicely, but when they are raised they offer little in the way of privacy as people living opposite can see straight into ones’ rooms – at least with curtains one can half draw them and sit out of the direct line of vision.  And on those cold winter evenings there is nothing nicer than drawing heavy velvet curtains right across and shutting out the cold and the dark.

So, I think in the New Year I will pop in to Peter Jones and see what ready-mades they have in stock.  Maybe I will treat myself and put a bit more of my character into the old place.  So, excuse my joke, but it will be curtains for blinds from now on.