Illustration: Will Wharfe
Stony Ground, Dead Salmon, Churlish Green …. I have long been enchanted by the Farrow and Ball fabled paint chart. But never have I appreciated how apposite the whimsy when read in relation to the gutting of Number 11 Downing Street. Especially under the tasteful curation of oversized-headband wearing Carrie.
With vaccine passports on the horizon I am indulging myself in what my first trip after lockdown will be. The Bronte Parsonage Museum (new portrait by Charlotte acquired)? Ann Hathaway’s Physic Garden (Hamnet fuelled obsession)? Sutton Hoo (gird yourself Suffolk The Dig will have them there in droves despite being filmed in not-on-my list Godalming)? No, get in the queue museums there will be time for us, for now it has to be every coach driver’s dream: The Guided Tour of Boris and Carrie’s Ermine-Lined Nest. Having not been allowed behind anyone’s closed doors for nye on a zillion days – we may as well start at the top.
So just what can the day-tripper expect when they peep through Boris’s keyhole? Surely Sulking Room Pink for the sitting room where the man of the house can watch, in seething HD awe, his nemesis’s latest promo Rishi Does Peloton; maybe Charlotte’s Locks or Nancy’s Blushes would exude a soothing backdrop to the turbulence of the water bed in the boudoir; Pitch Black or Hazy for the Master and Commander’s study where he assembles his scale-model for post-Brexit Britain – Red Lorry Yellow Lorry Park Theme Park out of old Château Margaux Wine Boxes; Savage Ground for that handy nook housing Dilyn’s lead and past their sell by date dog treats; the ghost of prime minister past summoned up in a kitchen daubed in Teresa’s Green; an accent wall of Incarnadine in the downstairs loo where Boris scrubs his hands clean of the kibosh handling of the pandemic whilst humming Happy Birthday. Or maybe the redec is Carrie’s coup d’adieu before sailing off into the sunset with Wee Willie Wilfred in the papoose, the passageway still wet with a second coat of Arsenic?
But before she flounces off in her cottagecore maxi let’s give our Carrie a great big national clap for single-handedly saving the endangered species that is the British Rattan Weaver - for whom her chosen interior designer - Lulu Lytle (monogrammer’s delight) has a particular penchant for. Having penned the de rigueur coffee table read Rattan: A World of Elegance and Charm I think it safe to say that along with the aforementioned theme park, it is rattan not the Scottish Whisky Industry that will save Brexit Britain’s bacon. Yes there is some warped verbal justice here when rattan will save us from the rats who are departing Britain in their droves (rumoured to be a million at last gangplank count).
And after our lockdown standards have slumped lower than a pair of perished elasticated joggers, this is the gilded life of privilege we need to brighten our days right now. When my own home resembles the backroom of Oxfam: an amorphous mass of half started craft projects – resin, soap, candle, macramé dusted lightly with buckwheat flour. But now that we are preparing to open our own doors to visitors other than the Ocado man, where better to look for interior inspiration than the eminently affordable Lulu Lyttle? I do think it churlish of those who scorn the inception of the much needed Save the Weavers charity that Carrie has crowdfunded for. Beavers, Weavers we’re all God’s creatures you know. Just because she has plumped for the callused fingered bi-peds over the furry dam-building variety should not matter in our animal fluid world. Thank you Carrie because a nation without rattan is a nation not able to strut their fretwork on the world stage. Having had a chair re-caned I can tell you those boys’ numbers are dwindling to snow leopard levels.
But the caveat of the tour must be allowing you to sneak in just as the galloping duo have popped out to the park with son and heir (actually probably unlikely – heir that is - I think it’s the clumpy brown wardrobe and stuffed otter for you dear Wilfred) and ‘popping’ could be 30 miles away. Yes what we paint-peepers want is the back door left ajar: milk still on the table; ketchup coagulating on the plate; sofa still bearing the warm indentation of a post-run Boris’s supine self… Nothing swept under the carpet. We want the Johnson-Symonds’ life interruptus.
But house snoopers be careful what you wish for. Do you remember the horror and the deliciousness in equal measures of the Queen’s Tupperwared cornflakes? Buckingham Palace looking little more than a chilly below stairs basement flat with nicotined net curtains?
Before we hotfoot back to the coach there has to be a visit to the gift shop. Fit as a Butcher’s Dog inscribed Butcher Style Aprons; Inappropriate Aphorism-a-day desk calendar; Anti-woke alarm clocks with Rule Britannia chime, Abacuses for keeping count of your children; Spaffing Height wall charts to see just how high you can spaff…
As I leave you in the booking queue, muse on the revamp for the Conservative Party Logo – another of Carrie’s amuse bouche. There can only be one contender. The priapic Stiffkey Blue.
Un elected officials !!!