You've bought your sweet little mews cottage for you indigent aunt, distempered the walls a mellow cream and ordered the net curtains. What's left? Why, measuring for the fitted carpets, of course.
Betty has always had a lot to say on the subject of flooring. Downstairs public rooms (especially in doctors' establishments) have an assortment of expensive silky area rugs. Upstairs bedrooms (especially in doctors' establishments) have fitted carpets in cream or pink (we never see more masculine rooms--this is not tarty book) wherein our heroine's feet sink luxuriously. [Betty Debbie] kitchens and sad bedsitters come in for "thin matting" - whatever that is.
And mews cottages never, but never, are refurbished without calling in the fitted carpet chappies (British word alert!). Indigent aunts prefer them in a soft mushroom color.
My own fitted carpets (in America we call them "wall-to-wall" carpets) are a textured medium brown because Betty Debbie, who has five boys, told me to get carpet the color of dirt. We could be generous and call them the colour of sauteed mushrooms. The textured part really helps hides stains too. They have held up beautifully to the three filthy boys I'm shepherding into adulthood. The daughter doesn't cause us to fear staining. Heaven help us if they weren't fitted.Non sequitur: There's a great film called Brittania Mews (1949) with Maureen O'Hara and Dana Andrews and some puppets--plucky and charming and set in a mews cottage.
I'll take your non-sequitur and raise.
ReplyDeleteI own the book Brittanea Mews...It was written by Margery Sharp..who also wrote Cluny Brown, The Gypsy in the Parlour and Something Light (all of which I own). She also wrote The Rescuers (Miss Bianca and Bernard...yeah, they're mice).