I think I may have mentioned DMs and my polarity regarding decoration. He occupies the end of a continuum where all of the walls would be white. I hate that for all sorts of reasons – firstly because it’s downright boring. It’s cold. It’s dull and it’s not very practical in a whole host of ways. It’s also plain stoooooopid when you have two insane, highly active dogs who are constantly charging in and out and shaking mud and slobber from their coats and mouths. I’m not saying we live in a house that’s permanently caked in mud but we do live in a house that gets caked in mud regularly.

My view of decoration is it has to be big, bold and most of all, colourful - the polar opposite of the continuum from my beloved. Red. I like lots of red in it (despite being a lilywhite girl in another sense). I love gold, yellow, pink, purple, green, blue, hell, anything but white or cream. I like soft furnishings (they maketh the place to steal a phrase). In fact, I like a load of old tat. Some would say I dress up our home like a tart’s boudoir and who’s to say they are wrong with those assertions.

This “old tat” is in the dining room, a room so red it almost hurts. I’ve accompanied the red walls with gauzy, diaphanous curtains (that don’t keep out any light at all) in orange, purple and pink, three pairs all bunched up to give them real volume and threaded through with these dinky little LED lights bought on a trip to London a few years back, when I was not so financially strapped obviously, in Covent Garden market. Remarkably they came in the same colours as the curtains. Strangely I’d half thought I’d come home and find them much cheaper elsewhere but in fact, the only other place I’ve ever seen them (Paignton Zoo of all places), they were much more expensive than these.

It’s funny, I can’t tell you how happy they make me. I think it is partly because I got the curtains for a total cost of £18 from Ikea and the lights for £30 so the whole lot cost less than £50 and it looks gorgeous, whether it’s daytime or nighttime. I don’t think that it’s just my tight-ness that makes me love them though, I think it’s their sheer, shimmering, colourfulness. You just can’t beat it.