Behind the scenes

In the interests of balanced reporting, I feel I should follow up my house tour post with the revelation that, from where I sit now, I can see an old desk piled high with magazines sitting, randomly, in the middle of the living room; a sideboard placed back-to-front and topped with an old tupperware, a buggy raincover, and two candlesticks; two seats from a Fiat Multipla; a landfill-worth of plastic toys; and a full laundry load of pants drying on the radiator.

Elsewhere in the house can I draw your attention to the crayon on the once-white walls, only up to a certain (nearly 2-year-old's) height? And there's the half-painted kitchen, four years on (we can only blame the kids indirectly for that one). The scene on the patio is no better... The sand table is grimy and water-logged, toys are scattered over the ground, those poor sunflowers have met a sorry demise.

So you see why I am an enthusiastic proponent of the closely cropped photograph. Despite the mess, there's always a pocket of prettiness to be found somewhere, if you look hard enough.