We are not Isrotel, we have four rooms. But still we need to identify them. “Take two towels to the green room”, my wife commanded me. “You mean the blue room”, I said. She is a little colour blind, my wife.
She thinks it’s me who’s colour blind, which is ridiculous but it’s no good telling her, she just flies into a rage. “You mean the South West room?” I say provocatively. She pauses, no sense of direction whatever. She tries again. “The room on the front on the left”. “Left looking out or left facing the house?” One has to take one’s pleasures where one finds them. We could have numbered the rooms but that feels like a warehouse or a prison. It was a problem that wouldn’t go away.We have nick-nacks and antiques all over the house, it is a mild compulsion of mine. She has stuff from France, I have things from England. One day we noticed that one room had a high concentration of French things. She called it the French room. Then we took all the French stuff and put it in the French room.
We did the same with another room; we filled it with English bits and pieces, and it became the English suite.
Two down, two to go. We had stuff we had brought back from our year in India…
… and stuff we had brought back from our two trips to Africa.
Now I know what you are thinking: The Versailles suite. Taj Mahal room. Giving the rooms pretentious names to make an impression. But no! We are not doing that, absolutely not, it’s not who we are. It is purely administrative.
