Country life
Too clean for comfort
Leanda de Lisle
Iremember some American comedian— I think it was Billy Crystal — describing how his parents kept their sofas covered with plastic. I absolutely understand why. For, while people in the country may have sofas that double as dog baskets, we do like to keep things for best. Those lucky enough to have ten gilded reception rooms will cre- ate a grotty new sitting-room by the kitchen in which they can spend every evening. As will those who live in a tiny cottage, care- fully locking the only room that's over ten- foot square to ward off any temptation to stumble into it.
The smart rooms are opened up for din- ner-parties and weekend guests. But as they haven't been used for weeks they have a rather lifeless and unwelcoming atmo- sphere, which isn't made any better by the cold that is a consequence of their not being heated as regularly as or to the tem- peratures of the rooms that are actually lived in. So, unsurprisingly, while guests like to have a quick drink in these rooms to satisfy their curiosity and assure themselves that they are important to their hosts, they invariably gravitate over the course of a weekend to the cosy back-room where we read books and watch television. I can't say I mind. It's like going home.
However, I am a little disturbed that we are now beginning to throw up a kind of barbed-wire fence between the back of our house and the front. This fence being our electronic burglar alarm system. It is still common in the country to leave doors unlocked when you are in the house. But unfortunately it is equally common for bur- glars to take advantage of this. Last year thieves walked through the front door of my parents' house while they and their guests were sleeping off lunch and walked off with several antique bits and pieces from the hall, the main stairway and a bed- room corridor. Then, while we were on holiday, the National Lottery winner next door had £30,000 worth of jewellery lifted from his bedroom while he and his man- eating dogs were having tea downstairs.
While I don't have £30,000 worth of jew- ellery in my bedroom or anywhere else, I'm still fearful this burglar might be tempted by all the little, glittery things we've collect- ed from around the world and to lose them would be to lose a part of my life. So I have let loose the hounds of paranoia and insist that every room in the house that we are not using is kept alarmed. Thus far it has been set off only once — by my youngest son, Dominic, who was going down to the kitchen to help himself to some breakfast. But I guessed what had happened. Then, suddenly, at two o'clock this morning, I heard an urgent beep, beep coming from my dressing-room.
I've always imagined that under these circumstances I would rush downstairs with an Uzi sub-machine-gun, crying, 'Don't call me babe', while spraying bullets at whoever came in my path. But what I actually did was to shake my husband frantically, with the intention of sending him downstairs to confront the desperate gang fingering my ashtrays. Strangely, `ze man of ze house', as my German nanny would have called him, didn't seem too keen to get out of bed. He just sleepily ordered me to switch off the alarm. As I was now feeling slightly guilty about my willingness to push him in front of a sawn-off shotgun while I hid under the duvet, I did as I was told. Only to find, when my eyes came into focus, that the alarm hadn't gone off at all. Rather, my mobile telephone was announcing that its battery had run out.
I was still tired this morning when my computer was moved out of my dressing- room to its new resting place in the library. This may have contributed to my being dazed and confused in my new nest beyond the green baize doors. But I suspect my sense of disorientation will continue until I have worn in the room with discarded bits of paper and old mugs of coffee. Perhaps I should spill something on my chair too. At the moment it feels as though it were cov- ered in plastic.
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