Sunday 1st May 2016

I’ve mentioned before that the prospect of mineral money (as yet not materialising, if ever) has sown discontent with my decor. I dream of unlimited antiques, I’ve made lists, I crave and crave. Will my decor ever be right? I imagine the day when I’ll be able to sink into my sofa and experience a wave of relief and content: at last, at last my decor is right. There’s nothing more to be done. But now it’s a race against time. Will I live to see it right? What if I’m took before my decor is complete? Before I’ve exhausted the possibilities of all known antiques? There’s always some superb item just out of reach.

So far, I’ve bought two chandeliers from a derelict dead man living before death in a flat in Pimlico for £100 (so his decor was over), another French chandelier on eBay, various dinner plates on eBay, a black Wedgwood tea-set, one little bookcase from a shop in Edinburgh and one Empire piece (rather expensive) from Welshpool. I’ll show you the Empire side table one day. It’s a step in the right direction. The chandeliers aren’t quite right yet. The dead-man pieces are modern but quite nice, thought to be Venetian. One has flowered quite well in my dining room. It’s murky in there as to light and one can get away with more. These chandeliers have plastic arms, you see. I’d never be able to convince anybody that they’d cost £25,000 or thereabouts. The other dead-man chandelier has gone into the back drawing room where there was nothing hanging before. The other, French, eBay one was intended for there but turned out to be too small. So that went into the hall where it looks a bit dismal on its own. So we’re back to square one in the back drawing room, still questing for a glass item of some kind of lots of good gilt included. As for the hall, I envisage a scene as in the chapel at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert – a mass of glittering hanging lamps.

The work of getting these chandeliers up! – I can’t begin to tell you. I nearly died going twice to Swiss Cottage to the only shop left with chandelier ceiling roses. Thank the Lord dear Miroslav was on hand to put them up for me – the roses that is. I self-hung the actual chandeliers. Terribly fiddly. Hours.

My main chandelier, which got damaged when I moved to my present Official Residence in 1996 and has hung wonky ever since  in my front drawing room, finally, finally I got repaired as part of this present drive. It came back last week but the badly squewed bit repaired has revealed how in other respects it isn’t straight. At Chatsworth or Buckingham Palace they’d send for the chandelier department and some of the best chandelier brains in existence would whirr on the problem. What can you do?

I’ve got so many plans: I’m going to tortoiseshell my trolley. But that’s enough decor for now.

eBay-bought French Chandelier Now Hanging in my Hall, to be Joined by Others in Due Course

Dead-Man Venetian (Possibly) Chandelier, £100 for two on eBay

My Original Bag Chandelier, Bought for £1000 in the 80s. Originally it Was Aunt Queenie’s Diamonds that were Sold. Now Repaired but Still Wonky