This week has found me quite ill and languishing in bed. Not Auntie Gwen's bed, which is replete with White Company 'linges' and looks just like a boudoir you'd find in a hotel, but my own, which is boho-shabby, or just shabby really...
Half-started, half-finished work is at hand there. Wallpaper is half-peeled from the walls. This is the wallpaper, a dark china blue festooned with fussy flowers that I swore would be the first thing in this cottage to go when we moved in around 10 years ago... What's up with that?!
I took the faded curtains down and the mis-matched poles about two years ago. The mirrored sliding door wardrobe is hanging off its hinges. What am I waiting for?
I bought a pair of pretty, second-hand pink Toile de Jouy curtains in one of my favourite bijou places a year ago. I have two windows to dress, and one set of curtains. Why?!
I am still searching for that perfect, worn but wonderfully vintage, gypsy patchwork bedspread that will echo my every dream. I see it sometimes in pictures in magazines. I never see it in real life. Why can't I reach a compromise?!
This trace of perfectionism I detect in me only serves to cause me delay in completing projects - I'd love your views on that?
Then, in another lovely blogger's pictures of her bedroom I found my perfect chandelier - It's even called 'Gypsy' - This is it in the picture! I had to have it - Mrs Jones kindly told me from whence it came and I ordered it when it was out of stock. It arrived just after Christmas. I'm still waiting for my electrician to hang it. He lives several doors down from me. He has my door-key to let himself in at any time to do the job. He's about to move house to the next village. I'll probably never see him again. I suppose I should get my key back off him before he leaves!
Still, at least my Edwardian dressing table is in situ after only a year of waiting in the garage. I need the room to fall into place somehow around it. I just need the perfect chair to sit at. I just remembered that I bought loads of vintage pink gingham checked cotton on the roll from a wonderful shabby-chic e-tailer and blogger, Shirley, from Simply Chateau in Normandy... I could have that made into curtains and cushion covers and a chair seat. I'd even forgotten I had that tucked away...
My life is on hold. At least it feels like it is. Being unemployed, I cannot face, or countenance, any new outlay. I am living in a half-finished nightmare, or dormant dream, whichever way you want to look at it. I am not sad, merely pregnant with anticipation at getting there, at some point, with my cottage home...
And then my husband is going to ask if we can move house. I just know it.
Perhaps I'm destined never to achieve my dreams.
Tell me yours?
