Design For Living

When we started making money
When we started making friends
We found a home as soon as we were able to
We bought this bijou residence for about a thousand more
Than the house our little house was once the stable to
With charm, and colour values, wit, and structural alteration
Now designed for graceful living, it has quite a reputation

We're terribly House and Garden
At Number Seven B
We live in a most amusing mews
Ever so very Contemporary!
We're terribly House and Garden;
The money that one spends
To make a place that won't disgrace
Our House and Garden friends!

We planned an uninhibited interior decor
Curtains made of straw
We've wall-papered the floor!
We don't know if we like it, but at least we can be sure
There's no place like home sweet home

It's fearfully Maison Jardin
At Number Seven B
We've rediscovered the Chandelier
Très très very Contemporary!
We're terribly House and Garden
Now at last we've got the chance
The garden's full of furniture
And the house is full of plants!

It doesn't make for comfort
But it simply has to be;
'Cos we're ever so terribly up to date
Contemporary- ry!

(spoken) Have you a home that cries out to your every visitor: 'Here lives somebody who is Exciting to Know!' No? Well…

Why not ...
Collect those little metal bottle-tops and nail them upside down to the floor? This will give a sensation of walking on little metal bottle-tops, turned upside down

Why not ...
Get hold of an ordinary Northumbrian spokeshaver's coracle, paint it in contrasting stripes of say Telephone Black and White-White, and hang it up in the hall for a guitar-tidy for parties?

(Why not ...
Keep, on some convenient shelving, a little cluster of clocks; one for each member of the family, each an individual colour? I like to keep mine twenty minutes fast, don't you?)

Why not ...
Drop in one evening for a mess of pottage? Our speciality
Just aubergine and carnation petals, with a six-shilling bottle of Mule du Pape, a feast fit for a king!

I'm delirious about our new cooker fitment with the eye-level grill. This means without my having to bend down the hot fat can squirt straight into my eye!

We're frightfully House and Garden
At Number Seven B
The walls are patterned with shrunken heads
Ever so very Contemporary!
Our boudoir on the open plan
Has been a huge success
Now everywhere’s so open there’s nowhere safe to dress

(Our search for self-expression
Leaves us barely time for meals;
One day we're taking Liberty's in
The next we're down at Heal’s!)

With little screens and bottle lamps and motifs here and there
Mobiles in the air, Ivy everywhere
You mustn't be surprised to meet a cactus in the stair
But we call it home sweet home

We're terribly House and Garden
As I think we said before
But though Seven B is madly gay -
It wouldn't do for every day -
We actually live in Seven A
In the house next door!