Sitting room etc
The activities that we undertake in this part of Monkey Towers include sitting down, lying down, watching television, reading the back of cereal packets, eating toast, taking socks off, impersonating contestants in 3-year-old episodes of Come Dine With Me, etc. The sofa is from IKEA and is not bad, despite the fact it took 4 visits and 123 phone calls to get it. The lights in the dining room were there when we bought the flat; they are stupid and hover at nose height, which is not much good if you are having dinner with someone you would like to look at in the eyes, but handy if you are having Sting round for tea.
Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the small wicker chair on the right hand side of the largest picture. It was given to us, stuffed to the very gills with roughly-hewn Afghan soap and olive oil bottles full of Radox decorated by partially-sighted gibbons, as a wedding present. My very favourite joke is to point at it and ask visitors if they would like "a little sit down". It is therefore also known as 'The Gift That Keeps On Giving.'.
Bedroom of Dust and Snore
British (or European) readers may notice the slight orangeyness of the woodstain, so often the feature of some older Canadian houses. On a more positive note, another common feature of Canadian houses (I will not use the word "home" or "property", even if, in this instance, the word "house" is technically not correct) are gigantic cupboards. (For e.g., I am not exaggerating when I say that one of the wardrobes at Monkey Towers (Country Division) is bigger than the first room I rented in London when I left university.) As far as Monkey Towers (Montreal Division) is concerned, you will note with interest that in this instance, the cupboards in the bedroom are so gigantic, so tall and so full of space they do not even fit in the picture. A ladder is needed to reach the upper levels, currently full of stale biscuits, empty crisp packets and back copies of Bunty.
The bookshelf next to the bed is full of pomes, some of which are by Pam Ayres (who, I am not ashamed to say, I once saw live at Redhill*). Of particular note is the cartoon (David Shrigley), which hangs strategically next to the bed, reminding us both of our inevitable fate(s).
Tomorrow is Monday. For most of you, that means work. For me, it means the beginning of another week of non-working (my fifth, no less), which will no doubt involve a number of minor incidents - incidents that I will relate back to you in the kind of detail that will make you wish you had never started reading this web-blog in the first place.
Pip pip!
NWM
* When Pam Ayres started reading "I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth", a ripple of applause spread around the room. It was like when young people go mad when they hear the first bars of "Eye In The Sky" at an The Alan Parsons Project concert, but in Marks & Spencer slacks and sensible footwear.
11 comments:
But this is a lovely monkey nest! (Do monkeys sleep in nests? And if not, why not?) It puts my southern-transplant home to shame, and reinforces my belief that no-one should ever see it.
WV = fatent. How odd!
HELLO AND WELCOME TO YOU ALISON CROSS. (Her blog is very funny, everyone - you must read it!!!) Thank you also for your kind words, which soothe my mind like the sound of Sting being silenced forever.
Johnners dear too kind! Someone once referred to their place of home as "our cozy nest" in front of my ears once, so since then I have rejected the normal monkey lifestyle and chosen instead to live as humans do, but with more dust and floorboards that only an English person would find charming.
Given your experience of French Canadia (and indeed of other sorts of Canadia) could you now let us into the brick secret? Why are some walls naked, naked, nude bricks and others not? Is it because everyone who lives there is secretly rather poor and can't afford the full whack of plaster and paint? Or is it thought to be rustic/charming/genuine?
Baron- just south of Canadia such walls are termed "features" and are so highly prized that there are entire television shows devoted to how you can, with some gunk-inna-tin and a bit of string, construct your very own nearly-but-not-quite real brick wall. Of course, there are other entire television shows devoted to expensive and difficult ways to cover up nasty faux brick walls...
To expound on Megan's exposé, I would add for Baron's sake that brick walls are a very british feature, at least in spirit. By that I do not mean that they are commonly found in british flats; I have few memories of british flats, and the ones I have are so completely overwhelmed by dreadful damp, cold, and fungal allergy that I remember nothing of the walls themselves. But brick walls are british in the way that they reject every kind of progress in home-building achieved in the last century or so, for the sake of old-timey "authenticity", however impractical and illogical it may be. They're a bit like royalty; dusty, pointless and retrograde, but ever so charming.
What is quite interesting about Johnnyboy's chitchat is that it is flats in Montreal that are full of bare brick walls. It will not have escaped his notice that Montreal is in French Canada, which is not at all British (more's the pity). What is more, when you look at flat listings in Montreal all the French listings are mad for it, the brick wall - it is most definitely a 'desirable feature' and they go on and on about it like it is a double garage or roof terrace. Fact!
It is true; it is a French thing. I live in France, and while I cannot afford actual naked brick walls, my bijou rented apartment is partially papered in stylish brick-effect wallpaper (in photos it looks almost like real bricks). This was mercilessly mocked by a (British) friend until I noticed that the fireplace in his parisian apartment featured BRICK VENEER.
I've been following the exposed brick comments with great excitement. In eastern Ontario, exposed brick and/or limestone walls are also considered madly desirable. I think it's because they mean the building is old & historical (ie, c19) and therefore better.
Brick veneer!!!!! I am on the floor. Dear Y S Lee, that is interesting...NB "Johnnyboy" has not yet responded ... I am just saying. He is a French Canadian from Montreal so I am waiting for him to justify himself. Yes.
Monkey dearest,
I fear that your "rapid reading" techniques may have gotten in the way of your reading comprehension (which I know to be otherwise completely flawless and of the highest sophistication). I did not mean that brick walls were literally an english/british feature, but rather that the concept, the Idea of the Brick Wall exhibited a trait that was very english in its thorough impracticality. Yes. Kill me now.
Final glimpse? Has your nonworkingness (sic) forced you to give up your fashionable city flat compleat with real bricks?
Post a Comment