If I Hadn’t Been a Writer
If I hadn’t been a writer, I would almost certainly have been a domestic goddess. This might have taken any number of forms, including cooking and gardening, but my real passion is decorating.
I love nothing more than taking a blank canvas – a room that has just a sofa, a couple of chairs, a coffee table, and turning it into a home. I add a large sisal rug and pile soft, squishy cushions on the sofas. A tray will go on the coffee table, and piles of books around. Occasional tables, lamps, small collections of pretty things: It’s the turning a house into a home bit that I adore.
Because I have done this a number of times, in the various houses in which I have lived over the past fifteen years, and because numerous magazines have photographed my homes, I have recently been approached by a number of furniture companies to talk about doing lines of home products for them. As with everything in life, this doesn’t actually mean it will happen, but the very fact that it might is enough to see me flying high with excitement.
A couple of weeks ago my team – the Creative Genius, Beloved, and the Spry Buzzard (named due to his buzzing around the town of High Point at speeds that left the rest of us breathless and exhausted) – took off to North Carolina to the big furniture market that happens twice a year.
We met with rug companies. With linen companies. With furniture companies. With accessory companies. We strode around looking at what everyone had to offer, and in the middle of one store, I stopped. There, in front of me, was a line of furniture from my childhood idol.
Donny Osmond Home.
I know, I know. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me either. When I think of Donny Osmond, which I have to tell you, I haven’t done for roughly forty years, but when I do, I think of perfect white teeth, and Puppy Love. I do not think of end tables and tufted high back sofas.
I have no idea how Donny Osmond lives, or what his personal style might be. If I were to ask Donny Osmond to come and decorate my house, I don’t how it would end up looking. I suspect it might be a little bit country with a little bit rock n’ roll, but you might call that an educated guess.
The ladies at the furniture company were terribly excited because Donny himself was making a personal appearance. They all said he was completely lovely, and they invited me to the appearance, telling me that I really ought to tell him that in 1973 I saw Donny and Marie in concert at Wembley Arena. They said he would be thrilled to hear I was there.
I really did want to go and meet Donny Osmond and hear which parts of my house he would make country, and which rock n’ roll. But then a big bottle of champagne found us, and sadly, we never made it out of the bar.
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