Wish list for a room

I have a large sitting room in which I'd love to have:

• Rich royal Roman purple velvet curtains thermal lined with matching tiebacks and cushions
• Silvery white paint work, including dado rail
• Pale yellow walls, papered or painted
• Parquet floor at least in the sun-lounge if not the sitting room too
• Under-floor heating
• Hot air heating
  
• Rich large rug on floor
• Roller blinds outside of all windows.

What have I got? Off-pink and green with a beige sofa that matches the 1930s beige tiled fireplace and a concrete floor covered with dirty green fitted carpet.

My study corner of this sitting room, summer-sun-hot freezing-cold-in-winter, has nine large windows with no curtains.

• In winter, it's freezing.
• In summer, it's too hot to work.

Double glazing is fine, but doesn't stop the draughts through poorly fitted windows. There's even a joint in a non opening window where the rain comes in when the wind blows against it.

I've painted one transom with emerald-green glass paint to stop the early morning spring sun dazzling. I've tried painting other transoms with green-house paint to reduce the heat but that looks horrid. On wooden poles I've hung tin-foil sheets that reflect the sun back very effectively. They also allow me to see outside in the daylight but not others to see in. However, they're not very robust, so they crumple, stick to condensation and tear. I need to get new ones, like some I saw on a door in France in 2006 and I've seen in Sicily. I also need them to be obviously reversible so that they reflect in in the winter and out in the summer.

One of the best solutions to the summer heat is growing hops outside the window. Husband has trained them along a wire at transom height, so in summer there's a thick green mass of leaves shading the room, but in winter they've died down again, and let in the light.

Now I've splashed out on new curtains, cherry red in chenille. I guess chenille is the poor man's velvet. They're lined, but not thermally lined. They're okay because they'll do the job so I'll be warmer, though I don't know what they'll do to help keep the sun out in summer, when I need cool and light to work by.

Boo to bureaucratic banks

I've just made two phone calls about paying for aunty's new sheltered housing, one to a county housing office about rent, and one to a bank about paying things.

1. The county officer was helpful. :-) Despite already owing rent, she's going to send me forms, and will let the rent officer know, so they won't hassle aunty.
   
2. The bank phone call was automated. :-( It took two tries to get a human. He said he knew what Legal Power of Attorney was, but then told me to go into aunty's branch with a letter of authorisation from aunty, some id for me and some id of hers. I explained I couldn't go into her branch as I live a long way away. He didn't know where the two towns were. (How can you sound gormless? I always thought it was the way someone looked.) So tomorrow I'll go into the local branch armed with all the documentation and ask for what I want to run her account.
   

So which organisation was efficient and helpful? The public sector one or the private one? People malign the public sector, but it was the public organisation that was efficient, human, friendly and understood my problem, not the bank.

Boo to banks.

Snowy sunset

This is the pretty view from one of the nine enormous windows in my study. Pretty cold too.

Snowed in town

We're snowed into town. Traffic can't get up the hill into the town, but pedestrians can. And since all the schools are closed, but being local, the children and their parents all live near their school, people are out together enjoying the snow, like the family that walked in from Turnfurlong bringing their daughters on a sled. Fun!

Shop workers have got in, but don't have enough to do, so to entice people to talk, those in and near Market Square are building snowmen, enough to have a competition. There's a snowman with a bowling ball near Jardines ten pin bowling alley, a snowman with a ribbon from C&G and a ticket to travel from Adams, a snowman with a mobile phone outside the phone shop, and, my favourite, a snowman with a top hat outside Suits You, which was so good that he had the local paparazzi photoing.

Thank you letters

At work, we're having coffee and comparing notes on Xmas experiences. One young man is whinging about having to send thank you notes to his girlfriend's mother. And somehow starts to complain about his mother. Young man gets little sympathy from the two mothers in the group. And our revered ex-director-of-studies advises him to do whatever his mother says, tells him to use only three words:

"Yes, mother dear!"

And always to use them, varying only to

"Yes, dearest mother!"

Revered ex-DoS says to do what his mother says, always, and be courteous, even though he's also muttering to himself,

"Mother, I'm an adult, I'm over 60 and drawing my pension soon."

My son has sent his thank you letters, and he's not whinged at all.