Welcome to my life! Or rather my lifestyle, which is a bit different, in that it is how I live in my head, unencumbered by the constraints of time, money, general ineptitude and chunky ankles.
In an idle moment today I indulged myself by making this "mood board" from leftover magazine cutouts that my daughter had been mucking around with at the weekend.
"Look at this," I said proudly to my husband, "Isn't it pretty? This is what life could be like if we were much richer and naturally stylish, if we were not us. Why is our life not like this? Something is awry. Our tea towels, for example, are all wrong. We have failed. I blame you."
The answer is simple. I must become a totally different person. How hard can that be? People do it on Oprah all the time after 15 minutes with Dr Phil and his magical hamster moustache. I will simply envision it.
My table will be graced by the world's most beautiful fruit bowl, filled with guavas and pomegranates, not dusty grape stalks and a surgical bandage, no siree Bob.
I shall ride my vintage push bike with its basket full of hyacinths, wearing my pretty tea dress, flip-flops and cloche hat. This will not result in my unprotected head being stoved in when my flip-flops catch on the pedals and I am hurled into the path of a corporation bus. These things do not happen to people like me. And even if it did, I would go gladly to my doom rather than be caught in a stained fleece, leggings and a helmet, calling to mind an escapee from a high security hospital.
My night table will be adorned only by a cut crystal water decanter and a slim volume of Rilke's greatest hits, sorry, I mean poems. It will not feature balls of hair, mouldy raisins and post it notes which read "Sell things?" and "ARMPIT SUDOCREM".
The cupboards will be stocked with miso soup and harissa paste sandwiches and different coloured magic beans. There will be butterflied lamb for supper, not Special K or anything, oh no, we are not SAVAGES.
At night the garden will be lit by hundreds of tea lights in Victorian glass specimen jars arranged to form the face of Diana Vreeland, the children's rooms will be adorned with original artwork, not posters of Rhianna fellating a Solero, the cat will not shit in the sock drawer, the phone will not be found in the bread bin, spiders will not hatch in my hair, I WILL NOT DRINK THE BATHWATER.
It will be lovely. I just have to not be me.
(First posted on my other blog http://therealshequeen.tumblr.com/ on 10 May 2012.)
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