I’ll never be able to lose the run of myself

MY kids are permanently waiting and ready like jungle predators to pounce on me for any potential misdemeanour. I’ve given them plenty of fodder over the years but nowadays I do nothing to embarrass them. Except get ‘notions’ above my standing.

When I was a kid we had a ‘drawing room’. That’s what my mother called it, so that’s what it was. It was a good room rarely used. Christmas day and visitors. But it was a ‘drawing room’. Not a parlour. Not a sitting room. A useless room with a fancy name. It’s only now with Downton Abbey that I realise what a drawing room is, and we actually had a sitting room. I have inherited my mother’s notions. When I gave up work, I envisaged myself pottering away. Getting crafty. Growing herbs on the windowsill. When the last of them had flown the nest I changed the smallest bedroom in my bungalow into a little space for myself. I got a retro record player and bought a large supply of vinyl records and CDs. I got a sofa bed. And I created a mental picture of myself sitting there, books and music in the background. I alluded to it as the ‘music room’ one day — and they fell around the place laughing. I have never once sat in there.

And now to their amusement, I have cleaned up the utility room, which is quite large and across a courtyard from the house. I have painted a lectern to use as an easel. I have bought a vast array of oils, watercolours and acrylics. It all looks great. There are multitudinous canvases and brushes. I have never once gone over there apart from to take stuff out of the tumble dryer. And I had the audacity to refer to it as my studio.

I now realise that what I excel at is doing nothing.