Small but Memorable

This is our back bedroom, Becky’s bedroom, not much more than a box room really but still it contains many years of memories and is the room from where I take my blips which look across our village.  I think I wrote a few weeks ago that I was tackling the last untouched part of our house which was the inside of our airing cupboard in Becky’s room.  It has been full of bedding and linen since we moved in back in the eighties so has been overlooked for decorating.

Having cleaned it down and filled the very large crack and countless small others before Mary moved into her bungalow, I’ve returned to paint it this last couple of days.  When I emptied it of towels and duvets and quilts I came across the cot duvet both girls used, with one of their quilt covers with smiley clowns and it took me back to when we decorated this room in preparation for the arrival of Becky.  We didn’t have much money in those days but we chose the nursery wallpaper carefully and managed to afford a bit of deep red carpet.  When I was heavily pregnant I would sit in here in my nursing chair, enjoying the mobile over the cot, thinking of what was to come.  Before we extended the house, our bedroom was next door and I can recall the morning we both lay awake scared because she had slept through the night and we feared the worst!

Then, before you knew it, there was Jenny too and bunk beds moved in to this room together with Honey and Growler and many more cuddlies.  The extension meant that Tony and I moved downstairs and the girls had the top floor (ours is three storeys at the back and two at the front) to themselves.  Jenny moved in to the front room and Becky stayed here and the décor turned Egyptian.  Becky painted the large doors on this airing cupboard with Egyptian Hieroglyphs. 

Buddy the cat would often seek out Becky when she was here in her room and it was from this third storey windowsill that he would fall one sunny day, and thankfully survive.  The vet saying it was a good job he had no teeth!

The years passed, the Indie music continued, the clothes in the wardrobe (the airing cupboard doubled as this!) changed and Becky went off to University, then to Sweden then to the USA and all too soon Jenny and Pete were in their own home and the décor changed again to suit the occasional visitor.  Now there are still half a dozen favourite cuddlies on the chest of drawers:  Honey, Superted, Spottyman, and graduation photos on the walls.  And, at last, the airing cupboard is painted (the last bits of Egyptian blue covered with white) and awaiting the return of some of that linen (much will be heading to the charity shop).  The tea towels from first school with their girls’ drawings of themselves will go back in the cupboard with the cot cover and those patchwork quilts I sewed when we were first married.


Oh, and girls, I found that missing piece of jigsaw……..