Finally, I’ve found the one… in a stranger’s home

Is it weird to knock on a stranger’s door on a trip to Kent to ask where she got her glamorous wallpaper? My husband thought so. But, of course, I went ahead and did it anyway. More of which shortly.

First, I shed a tiny tear as I waved my 16-year-old off on an Easter trip to Florence this morning. She and a friend organised it themselves, and who can blame me for feeling weepy?

No, not that kind of weepy. I was desperate to go – not least because, unlike her best mate, I know the difference between a chianti and a montepulciano – but she still refused to invite me.

My main concern now is safety; not from the smouldering lads on scooters but the pulse-quickening glories of the Uffizi. Stendhal syndrome, also known as Florence syndrome, is the term given to the dizzying, overstimulating effects of sublime art which used to bring many a young man to his knees.

It’s reassuring to be reminded that people really do go weak (and a tiny bit insane) in the presence of beauty. I know that’s how I felt in Winchelsea.

To explain; my husband and I were staying in Rye to commemorate our 30th anniversary. We celebrated. We cerebrated. We visited Winchelsea as my father-in-law had been billeted there in the Second World War.

And there, across the road from the churchyard where Spike Milligan is buried – his Celtic cross does indeed bear the epitaph “I told you I was ill” in Gaelic – I was moseying through people’s front windows when I spied it. The Wallpaper of My Dreams.

It was pale, botanical, rambling and sumptuous. Perfect. When you meet the one, you just know. My spouse scarpered as I rat-a-tatted on the door, which was opened by the foreman overseeing the decorating. The owners weren’t there, but he had a poke about for the packaging and let me take a photographic sample.

But having googled it, I’m still none the wiser. Apologies for barging in, but if the chatelaine could drop me a line, it would very almost make up for missing out on Michelangelo.