Side Project D

[Clearly our side projects to 2020 Covid19 Knockdown were not destined to be completed in the order in which they were conceived.]

Hitherto we’ve both been sharing one “office”, which was originally designed to be a single bedroom. Francine, a confirmed laptop user, has been using a desk beside mine that looks directly through the south-east facing window. So, when it deigns to shine, glaring sun could be a problem.

A little while ago, Francine also invested in an A3 printer which is a bit of a lump and which meant she needed more room – the entire room. So, Francine decided to kick Franco out into bedroom #3 which was to get kitted out as a Man Cave. Franco is a confirmed desktop user and bedroom #3 has a little more space for a decently sized monitor. [I need a new one anyway ‘cos there ain’t any Win 10 drivers for my old 23” Dell monitor.]

So, I had a third bedroom to decorate which, by decree, was to be done in the new Francine corporate colour of Wimborne White; it’s spreading quite rapidly throughout the house.

Then we got to thinking, if a boy has a Man Cave, what does a girl have? Girl Cave doesn’t sound right.

Enter a useful phrase from a traditional ol’ nursery rhyme, though I must confess that, being blissfully child free, I had to look up where the phrase came from:

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.

…

Ah ha, men have caves but ladies have chambers. Perfick!

An aside. Having looked up my nursery rhyme, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the splendid movie Educating Rita. Frank [Michael Caine] refers to a poem by WB Yeats in which he “rhymes swan with stone” as an example of assonance. Rita [Julie Walters] responds, “yeah, means getting the rhyme wrong”. Excellent!

We have the same here. Gander doesn’t rhyme with wander, if it’s supposed to, and neither does wander rhyme with chamber. ‘Tis all stuff and nonsense. Poets, eh? Who’d have ‘em?

Back on track, we’ve been creating a Lady’s Chamber.

This gets me into some more delightfully irritating modern English. We might say that we have re-imagined our original office as a Lady’s Chamber. Not only that but we have done it with re-purposed furniture that we already had, namely an old stock of Beaver & Tapley units in a rather swish burgundy oak (sadly no longer available). These were largely the units from our original dining room when 2020 Covid-19 Knockdown began. Glasses cupboards have lost their glazed doors and become book cases.

I dislike what is happening to our language. None of this is quite as infuriating as “a big ask”, though.