Rab McNeil

INTERIOR decor is not really my thing. I’ve no aesthetic judgment in such matters and, besides, can’t be bothered putting in the work. When I buy a house, I accept the decor I’m given. Well, that’s not strictly true, but it takes me ages before I start changing things.

I’ve been in my current house 18 months and have only repainted one room. All the others – including the hall – are blue, which is peculiar.

The one room I did paint I changed to white with grey trimmings, the Scandi-style that regular readers know I deplore.

But it’s a very dark room, because of all the tall greenery outside it, and it needed lightening up. In retrospect, though, I wish I’d gone with my usual bright yellow.

I’m your man for primary, nursery school colours. Although I haven’t painted many rooms, I have painted other things, such as all my boring Ikea-style pine furniture, which is now yellow and blue and green.

I also painted half the exterior of the house. It’s pebble-dash, which is hellish, and I made a complete bags of it, so I’m not doing the other half (the half that people can see).

I wanted to paint the house a jolly colour, or even just Celtic or Cornish cream (of which I’m particularly fond; colour of the Corporation and institutions in happier days gone by).

But I wimped out and just went for white, like every other house round here. In another island group, one of those cod-Nordic ones that are actually very Scottish, I once painted a garden fence blue, and it was the talk of the steamie for months.

All the other houses were concrete or, if wooden, just broon. Scotland is a colourless country.

The two streets that aren’t, in Tobermory and Portree, are so unusual they have become iconic, to use that peculiar word.

But, returning to indoor decor, I have always found painting to be a task I instantly regret starting. It takes forever. Everything needs four coats.

And, even if I put down protective sheets, I get paint on my heid, face, shoes, shirt front and tongue as well as on the floor and sundry furnishings.

As with any “DIY” project, I really should get a man, or men, in to do it properly. But the day I employ tradesmen to do a job like that will also be the day I order in a small vat of caviare.

Never going to happen, unless my numbers come up in the lottery and, being a pessimist, I never do the lottery.

Oh, to be the Prime Minister or, in a purely metaphysical sense, his bidey-in, Carrie Symonds. She – allegedly – has spent £200,000 on their Downing Street flat. It’s reported that the Conservative Party, or donors within it, have met much of the bill, so perhaps I should write to them. I am not familiar with the name.

Is it a charitable foundation or something?

But how could a decor bill come to £200,000? That’s what you or

I would spend on buying a whole hoose, never mind just decorating it. According to Tatler magazine, Miss Symonds regarded the PM’s residence as a “John

Lewis nightmare”, perpetrated by the hoose’s predecessor, yon petitbourgeois Theresa May wifie.

But petit-bourgeois is a status to which most of us aspire. Besides, when John Lewis is derided as the cheap option, you know you’ve blundered through the bespoke looking glass.

The left-wing Daily Mail newspaper compared Lewis’s prices with those possibly incurred by Carrie, including £2,000 for a sofa as against £20,000. I’m pretty sure my two-seater sofa was less than £100 new. It’s right manky, mind.

A John Lewis lamp was costed at under £20 – eh? Ah hae ma doots – while a likely Carrie model was put at £12,000. These figures make ma heid hurt.

At a time when many folk are hurting economically, there’s more than a hint of Marie Antoinette

(much misunderstood lass, mind) about all this.

You could probably sell Carrie a vanilla slice for three grand.

A saucy tale

IN yonder England, a spirited debate is taking place about whether vinegar or salt should be put on chips first.

In Scotland, of course, all decent ratepayers deploy broon sauce, not vinegar, particularly on a fish supper. Also, it has to be chippie sauce, which is more slithery and frankly piquant than HP and the like.

And of course it’s salt first. When we’re at the chippie, the maître d’ doesn’t say: “Sauce an’ salt, sir?” He says: “Salt an’ sauce, big nose?” I’m getting a message in my earpiece saying that people in the west of Scotland have salt and vinegar on their fish suppers. You’re kidding me. If this is true, it just shows how anglicised Glasgow has become.

It’s not a proud Scottish city like Edinburgh, where everyone votes Yes to indie and stravaigs aboot in kilts.

Just away to check my facts. Get back to you on this next week.