For some reason I have started writing soon after I get up, partly as I have to look at my e-mails first thing in case my daughter in India has written anything crucial. She is now back in four days and I forsee a stream of sagas about to ensue. My two daughters have totally opposing visual tastes and as they have to share a flat this is not ideal. Influenced by a long-term Italian boyfriend my middle daughter has evolved a liking for a spare, minimalist look using a lot of cream and earth tones and with NO CLUTTER. While the older one leans towards the hippie, with ethnic drapery. strings of fairy lights, walls crammed with pictures and photographs and every surface covered in quirky or 'amusing' things. Before she met the boyfriend the middle one was also happy with this and my son loves it. I have to say it is more my style as well.

In the months since the older one has been away their sitting room has been slowly cleansed and cleared until last week the middle one finally removed all the coloured cushions from the sofas and achieved her goal. An upmarket hotel room. My son appeared downstairs in despair, 'What is it with her? Where does she come from? Every single thing I liked about that room is gone and now it looks more middle-aged than it does down here. I said where are all the photographs off the walls and she said why didn't I pick out a COUPLE and she would get them FRAMED'. He slumped into a chair; the bourgeois thought of actually framing photographs was the last straw. I promised that I would 'speak' to her.

Her eyes filled with tears. 'Do you have any idea what I have to put up with? The others are both complete slobs. They couldn't give a f@ck if the rubbish is never emptied and leave full ashtrays everywhere and shoes all over the floor and don't hoover and I am ashamed for my friends to come round. Just for one moment I wanted things to be how I like. She'll be back next week with her bags full of crap which will rot in the passage for months and hanging stupid sequined drapes in here and putting THINGS all over the surfaces....' She broke down.

It makes me cry too. They are both going to leave soon, I know it. It is amazing that I have kept them with me so long. On their part it is a mixture of laziness, not having to pay central London rent and that one of them is usually away. On mine, a cunning mixture of extreme niceness and a whiff of emotional blackmail. Their flat is quite separate from ours with its own front door but has an internal staircase joining the two, so it is a bit like being in one house. Which is how I like it. I can't imagine having to make a special journey to have a chat with one of my children. Or actually I can and I so don't want to.

God...I thought writing in the mornings meant that I was appearing unusually upbeat as opposed to midnight ramblings fuelled by whisky. I was reading the 'weN rekroY Book of yraretiL snootraC' which I find very funny. One of them was of 'Dr. llykeJ and Mr. eeffoC' , perhaps that has become my problem.

- posted by Iris @ 2/22/2004 10:30:00 AM comment