I’ve been feeling a little bogged down over the past few days. Lots to do, but no brain or motivation. Actually flitting about in Blogland makes it worse. Everybody elses little world seem full flowers and colour, homes straight out of ‘Country Living’. Happy children in homemade clothes eat vegetable soup straight from the kitchen garden, while mum produces patchwork quilts and hand knitted socks and fairy cakes, photographs it all AND writes about it.
Now I know that it’s the nature of beast. No one is going to photograph those days when the washing mashine overflows, the teenager throws a tantrum, the house is filled with the smell of burning toast and the puppy has done a poo behind the sofa…(that last a regular occurance in our house!) We create a fantasy version of our own lives for the consumpion of our readers, just in the way any magazine editor portrays a ‘look’ for publication. An acquaintance who’s ‘lovely country home’ was featured in a well know publication a few months ago said ‘It’s wonderful! They come in, and rearrange all your stuff, yes, but they CLEAN! Our house has never been so clean! And they do amazing things with the lighting!’ So even the house owners don’t live in houses like the ones in magazines!
So we make our own reality, and sometimes, when the north wind( heavily laced with farmyard manure) is howling across the vast field at the back of our house and darkness falls earlier and earlier, and your head is stuffed up with the first cold of the season and, Oh NO! there’s ANOTHER poo behind the sofa, it gets a bit hard. Hard to remember that you ‘live in the heart of the lovely Norfolk countryside, a stones throw from the Broads, a short drive from the beautiful windswept Norfolk coastline’. That your little cottage in it’s pretty garden is filled with books and crafts and colourful china which suitable displayed and lit, would portray a parallel existence.
I’m blaming the cold for all this…what I need is a rocket up my bum, back to Planet Penny!
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Dear Penny,
Is it comforting to know that however messy your house is, it will never be as bad as ours? Just a bit?
Feeling quite smug as I think it’s the first time I’m the first person to leave a comment on a post in the history of the blogosphere.
Off to carve a pumpkin in the hope that OUR children will eat HOMEMADE soup (actually, I think I’ll just open a tin of Heinz).
Lots of love
Celia T (I noticed there was another lovely Celia commenting)
You make me want to move back to England, apart from the poo bit!
My answer to any comments about my abode’s disarray is “I live in a home, not a show house”! Still, shame it isn’t a country manor….might be good to get the cleaners round and see it in a new light!
Your house is one of the nicest, cosiest places I know, despite the puppy and a certain telecoms engineer’s ski bag. I don’t trust anyone whose home is un-naturally tidy, and I don’t think those interiors mags are good for the soul.
(Who’s is the typo in the second para? Some a’quaintance’s?:-P)
I’m quite sure real people don’t live in tidy perfect homes but I recognise that feeling that overwhelms sometimes. Hang on it there!
Thanks Thomas, I’m benefiting from your hours of proof reading!
Hi – I think I’m in that place too – blasted colds! They get us all raw and delicate and give us time to look around at the chaos and the dusty corners of life!
It’s rather comforting to know that the homes in certain life style mags have been ‘made up’ based loosely on a rose-tinted truth. And there was me thinking “How does that women do it?!!!”
I freely admit that I’ve chosen to hide the trashy corners of my life from my blog readers. My blog posts look on the bright side of life, for my benefit as much as anyone else’s and to put a positive spin on the day.
the other Celia
You are so right about the bloggy editing of the real world. Can I put a tiny hand up and say that I really don’t mind everyone knowing I am a craft floozy, that I’m having an argument with the Mr, that my kid is having a tough time at school or that there is a Mount Washing spilling out of the laundry? But I still refuse to photograph the washing. I don’t want to see it on my blog as well as underneath my feet (but I’ll tell you if it’s underneath my feet. Rivoting reading, that)
PS. You were so, so right about embroidery the Ruby Doll face and coming over all attached and stuff!
PPS. Best of luck with the poo behind the sofa malarkey.
Hit the spot with your blog this am! I’m about to rush round in headless chicken mode because my bro Jonathan and his wife Sue are arriving this evening to stop over. I only seem to realise what a tip the place is when someone is looming over the horizon. The rest of the time I just seem to move ‘stuff’ from one messy area to another. Just moved a pile of papers and found some really nice things I tore out of magazines years ago, but I can’t think of where to file them logically, so I just squared them up a bit and put them back in the same heap!! Happy Sunday to all your readers………….Kit
Hi Penny, Thanks for dropping by! I have an inferiority complex when I drop by some peoples blogs and see their ‘perfect’ homes and all they manage to achieve during the week. Some people amass loads of comments too and it seems like I am entering a popularity contest where I come way down the list. Anyhow I persevere and do the best I can! I hope your cold soon clears up and the poo too!!! x
Only we truly creative people can create a decorative and colourful profusion ( i.e. clutter ) in casual abundance ( i.e. lots of clutter ) with an enviable panache .