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| Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert/Nicky Brewin |
I am completely addicted to this programme. If you've not seen it, it is basically the perfect combination of Changing Rooms and the Culture Show (what with Tom Dyckhoff and everything), interspersing scenes of paint-spattered amateur interior designers - all huge-eyed with caffeine and desperation to win on the back of their beautiful, yet also hasty and slapdash, living room revamps - at work, with charming vignettes of cheeky Tom telling us about things like Brutalist architecture. I suspect I'm developing a weird little crush on Tom, but I think he's probably gay. Is he gay? If not, it could be so lovely, the two of us punting down a summer river in Oxford while he waxes lyrical about the history of... something or other... this daydream almost entirely stems from the fact that he wears a lot of stripy t-shirts and blazers, obviously.
Anyhow, EHEM, back to The Great Interior Design Challenge. It's made me think about Interior Design, for the first time since 1998! It makes me imagine, for at least ten minutes every evening, that I would quite like to be an interior designer myself. That is, until I remember that I think that particular job is frivolous and vacuous and meaningless. But is it though? Isn't it important what kind of spaces we live in, what we are surrounded by in our daily lives? Alain de Botton certainly thinks so, and I'm inclined to agree. So if having a beautiful lounge improves our mental health, lifts our mood and inspires us, surely that means 'Interior Designer' is a worthwhile career to have? Then again, if people are really that bothered about the appearance of the inside of their homes, can't they just make it look nice themselves? Hmmm.
I don't know. My most recent life aspiration has been to subsistence-farm out of a backwoods cabin home in which I have made everything myself from rough-hewn logs and homespun hemp, anything else being a disgusting waste of money, resources and carbon. But maybe that's actually not what I want at all, maybe what I really want is to have a directional haircut and wave fabric swatches around convincing people to pay me to have someone paint their walls apricot and duck-egg blue. I did find myself thumbing through an 'artistic spaces' book in the library the other day, what does this mean? Oh TGIDC, you have me bewitched and bewildered!
Anyhow, it's great and the final is on TV tonight. I'll be watching and, afterwards, weeping a little as I face the rest of the year/life (I don't know, will they do another series?) with a gaping, empty hour from 7pm to 8pm every weeknight.
Anyhow, EHEM, back to The Great Interior Design Challenge. It's made me think about Interior Design, for the first time since 1998! It makes me imagine, for at least ten minutes every evening, that I would quite like to be an interior designer myself. That is, until I remember that I think that particular job is frivolous and vacuous and meaningless. But is it though? Isn't it important what kind of spaces we live in, what we are surrounded by in our daily lives? Alain de Botton certainly thinks so, and I'm inclined to agree. So if having a beautiful lounge improves our mental health, lifts our mood and inspires us, surely that means 'Interior Designer' is a worthwhile career to have? Then again, if people are really that bothered about the appearance of the inside of their homes, can't they just make it look nice themselves? Hmmm.
I don't know. My most recent life aspiration has been to subsistence-farm out of a backwoods cabin home in which I have made everything myself from rough-hewn logs and homespun hemp, anything else being a disgusting waste of money, resources and carbon. But maybe that's actually not what I want at all, maybe what I really want is to have a directional haircut and wave fabric swatches around convincing people to pay me to have someone paint their walls apricot and duck-egg blue. I did find myself thumbing through an 'artistic spaces' book in the library the other day, what does this mean? Oh TGIDC, you have me bewitched and bewildered!
Anyhow, it's great and the final is on TV tonight. I'll be watching and, afterwards, weeping a little as I face the rest of the year/life (I don't know, will they do another series?) with a gaping, empty hour from 7pm to 8pm every weeknight.
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