Sunday 27th March 2016

I’m still side-tracked by time from my thread.  Harry Rollo and Robert Nevil’s TV viewing on hold.

Easter Day began with a radio appeal by Jonathan Pryce, the actor, for a charity that buys cows for women in Bangladesh and other such places where there is the most frightful poverty. He said that desperately poor people only have rags to cover their children and no proper roof over their heads. Please help them. I was at a loss because all I think about is antiques (at the moment) and how to give more importance to the further end of my drawing room. What to do? Oh what to do? The Gay Mother and I went to Church where the sermon was the tidal wave of faith and care that poureth forth from Jesus, if only we could immerse ourselves and give to him as he gave to us. Also that the accounts of the Resurrection have the ring of truth. The Gospel writers would have colluded surely if they were fabricating? No, the Lord really did rise again. Well, I don’t mind that. I’m all for Resurrection. Fashion itself is the fight against Death, with endless renewal every season. The same with the home, face, hair, cuisine – at all phases of life, there is hope until Death. The Gay Mother has been saying recently, at 92, that she ought to try new recipes. Well, I did begin to wonder, sitting in Church, whether it would not be a sin, where the opportunity exists, to fail to improve one’s drawing room. Does it not say somewhere that we are to embrace the abundance of what has been given: to turn away in misery is a crime? And so much has been given in terms of upholstery techniques, gilding, veneers, polishes, porcelain, glass, silver-work…

In any case, after Church a new woman in the village invited the congregation back for a coffee morning. Except it was prosecco. She’s been renovating her inherited farmhouse in the village. Georgian panelling uncovered, traditional iron coat-hooks re-made locally, a spiral staircase discovered, all the floors up, a concrete base, under-floor heating, reclaimed flagstones at £300 a square metre, more original pegs … it was a orgy of renovation and decor and we were back to square one.