Woke up in the dark, mouth like a hay-barn. The result of drinking white burgundy too close to bedtime. Went downstairs and swigged chilled fizzy water from the fridge. Returned to bed. An hour later the same sensation and the same solution. I chose to sleep on the couch in the lounge to be nearer the fizzy water.
Woke at dawn with sunlight starting to peer through the fabric of the pull-down blinds in the lounge. A pleasing effect, never previously noticed. Mouth back to normal so I daydreamed.
Twenty years ago we’d just moved in, neither of us with a shred of talent for enhancing our living space. Where colour was an issue we always went for sage green, mainly because it was innocuous.
At the time we’d incidentally come into touch with a fledgling interior decorator service – two young women just starting out. Amazingly they charged peanuts and we gave them their head – well, more or less. It was they who specified the individual pull-down blinds and I for one have never thought to change.
The windows the blinds cover are in a bay recess and for that they specified a heavy wooden rail with permanently tied-back curtains at either side, implying the bay is a very shallow theatre stage. Corny? All I can we couldn’t have done better. They also spec’d the wall lights and the central light fitting to our satisfaction.
It’s taken me a full generation to notice the effect early morning sun has on the blinds and I’d like to compliment them. Alas, we may have been their first and last client since they fell out with each other and retreated into oblivion. Both perhaps rather too pretty.
Old age has made us timid. Doubt we’d ever again hire an interior decorator.
More wine before bed time always seems like a good idea. We never learn.
ReplyDeleteTom: But it's not exactly a bad idea. I mean that was two or three days ago. The key is timing the impulse
DeleteEarly morning light through the blinds is why we always want our bedroom facing east. It's so good you got to see that. Glad you are well. Lesson learned about that wine before bedtime.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: I really should check out the the house's geographical alignment. My study is on the other side of the house and yet I get wonderful dawns - with orange and ultramarine strips of cloud - as the sun rises over the Malvern Hills. Perhaps it's the house that rotates.
DeleteAch, now I know why the German-American carpenters situated my apartment building as they did in 1925 ... my bedroom has one east-facing window and one south-facing. It does make a difference.
ReplyDeleteZu Schwer: Well I assume your bedroom is on a corner of the building. Always remember the curtains when you're dressing/undressing.
DeleteI like that theatrical touch!
ReplyDeleteCareful with the late-night wine...
Had to go south, so I'm behind with your doings again. Tired of that 900-mile drive. Shall be back with the guys and the animals on All Hallows.
Marly: Did you do 900 miles in one hop? Those days are now well into my past.
ReplyDeleteThe imagination, if exercised, can always conjure up something new to write about but to discover something physical and new in a a small area of that place you have inhabited for over twenty years from a perspective experienced almost every day during that period is a little treasure as you have so enchantingly described.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: The key to such posts is the difference between "see" and "observe". The former is more or less a passive activity, the latter is much rarer since the intellect (esp. the desire to understand) is engaged.
ReplyDeleteThat's called "Looking on the bright side."
ReplyDeleteColette: But wouldn't it be even brighter on the other side of the blinds?
ReplyDelete