Regular readers of this blog might think that we are obsessed with curtains. It is true that while Peter has been opening up the eastern side of the house to sunlight (Summer Look) by removing curtains and filtering light to the north by closing curtains (Delicious Gloom), I have been perfecting total sun block curtains to the west (for the reason see Romanovs & Me and for the approach see Going Gock on David Hicks).

Well my new curtains have arrived and their greeny-yellowy, neo-David Hicks, Greek key pattern and my two tone (red and  brown) wallpaper – is one of those perfect matches that no interior decorator would ever recommend. They block both sun and heat and I love them and thus another curtain posting – well not quite.

The lady who made my curtains suggested I needed a few more rings to give them proper bulk and fall. Ever hopeful I asked where I could source extra brass curtain rings (other than the insanely expensive price of $7 each on the Recollections website). She suggested ‘imitation brass’ (gold painted plastic) as they were preferred by ‘most people’ as they made less noise.

As much as I might like to be, I am constantly reminded that, however hard I try, I am not most people. This new information regarding curtain rings provided what was just another piece of evidence in support of my weirdness. As it stands, in range of my noisy curtain rail I have a middle aged man with a Harley that he takes out of the garage and revs for hours on end but never rides, a neighbour who plays music, he’s thirty years too old for, until the stroke of midnight, a children’s toy that plays the Omm Papa song from Oliver in a harsh mechanical voice for days on end, a teenager that runs up and down on the wooden floor of a hallway that works just like a drum, and the thwack, thwack, thwack of a tennis court. Not all of these noises are annoying – but no one has ever apologised for those that are, or done anything to lessen their effect.

So, not being most people, I’d like to apologise in advance to any neighbour woken by the early morning rattle of my curtain rings – but gold painted plastic?

DLJ