|
I sidled into the Earls Court Ideal Home Show like a thief in the night. What business had an over-casual and intermittent housekeeper like me, still receiving hate mail as a sheet slut, in its glittering aisles? Chic demonstrators sashayed across beige carpets, plumping up fur-covered cushions on vast low leather sofas, flicking on lights by touching the leaves of a pot plant, archly patting a fur-fabric pooch in a burberry check dog basket. Spookily clean gas-coal and gel fires shimmered, notional hearths with no heart at all. This was not about home, it was about show. And for me it was far from ideal.
But then I saw a wall-hung scarlet towel rail bent into the shape of a person (perfect to hang a bathrobe on), an exquisitely simple washbasin and surround made from a single piece of inch thick crystal glass and a double bed with a plasma screen rising from its footend at the touch of a remote. I began to waver. Aspirations hit in like a Force 10 gale.
Only a reality check saved me. My bathroom has no free wallspace, and the basin would crack when I stood on it to chagne the lightbulb. Nor would the plasma screen rise up more than a foot in my garret bedroom. Still, a woman can have dreams, and pocket leaflets to furnish them with. One of these days I will move house, after all.
I decided to proceed methodically, missing nothing. Noting one of the few cooks in the immaculate show kitchens sliding a tray of cheese straws into a glitzy stainless steel oven, I paced myself carefully up and down the first three lanes of displays. By the time I had returned to be casually present as the crispy gold cheese straws were pulled out of the oven, I had composed a riddle. What do halogen heaters, blinds, wardrobes, central heating systems, curtains, vacuum cleaners and garage doors (whoops, given it away) have in common? And how come no-one was selling multi-holstered belts to hold all the remotes?
But you can buy hooded towelling capes embroidered with your name for use on emerging from a shower cubicle with not only a steam feature, handsfree telephone and radio, but a television. Or after a long soak in the six-person ocean-wave opal finish hot tub, with purple underwater halogen lighting, 47 jets, two (only two?) massage systems, DVD player and TV. And of course a (floating) remote.
My credit card, now gloriously free of calls on it from the children, was beginning to burn a hole in my pocket. Fortunately, I’d got to the nether regions of the show, empire of mad inventors and bargain offers. Within twenty minutes I had bought a carpet sweeper with a rechargeable battery and a wizard way with dog-hair and spilt crisps (reality-check: YES!), a compendium set of Crown Darts, a lawn game with weighted giant plastic darts that will go down a storm at The Wedding, and a double airbed that fits in a backpack and inflates in three minutes using its own built in electric pump. Perfect for extra visitors - and to take with me almost anywhere.
I spent the last fifteen minutes of my visit lying supine in the aptly-named I-joy auto-massage chair with a smirk very similar to Jane Fonda’s in the Barbarella pleasure-inducing machine on my face. Forget those snotty jeers in the first paragraph. British homes have never ever had it so good.
|
|
|
