Love conquers all

I’ve seen some blogs where every post is chirpy, and they read like an exercise in counting blessings. Blogs like that get on my nerves. On a personal basis, cheerfulness is attractive. Upbeat people are a joy. But unrelenting cheerfulness in a diary is dull. I can’t take the cheesiness. And it sounds so fake. What is this person NOT telling me?

A weekend away for three sisters in their mother’s empty house (empty of their much-loved mother) had the potential not for cheese, but for immense discomfort, when the purpose of the weekend was to prettify the house (on a tiny budget, and with odds and ends from home) so that buyers could see its potential, and be willing to take on the modernisation required. Three women with different tastes engaged on a joint venture of domestic chic is bad enough. If those three women are straight talking, with very definite views, and are also picky, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Other conditions were not propitious. We arrived in fog so thick we couldn’t see the hills; the house was freezing cold (despite the fact that Jonty had turned up the heating and also lit the fire for us – what a peach!) because a cottage with three foot thick stone walls takes a lot of warming up. The weather was cold and grey, with rain  and sleet. We were too busy to enjoy the dale, apart from a brief walk to Aysgarth Falls, and an evening out with Jonty and Rachel, who cooked us a fantastic dinner.

As for the mission..there was a spat over whether a leather suitcase on the dresser looked old-lady-ish or Country Living–ish, a disappointment over a framed poster that one sister wanted to hang and the others hated. One sister’s cushions were banished to the boot of her car because they were the wrong colour, and there were tussles over the exact position of a vase of flowers on the windowsill, and oh yes – a chair which one wanted in one corner and the other wanted “Here! To cover up this stain!” There was also a last minute overruling that the basket in the porch was an affectation, and looked twee.

But the mission was accomplished: with new curtains, new bedspreads, new cushions, different pictures and lots of hard work and careful thought, the house looks lighter and prettier.

And we had lots of teasing, lots of laughs, lots of cosy chats in bed with mugs of tea. We loved being together.

Love really does conquer all.

(And you’ll just have to forgive the cheese.)

Oh, and this is the bedroom where they wouldn’t let me put the leather suitcase! The b******s!