I’m
in that post-decorative slump that usually happens sometime between the Chinese
New Year and Easter when your mojo’s disappeared down a rabbit hole and like
Alice, all you want to do is scoff anything labelled ‘eat me’. In my case, labeling is optional.
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| Yummy - banana bread |
It’s
too cold to paint so I’m going to use this moment to tell you the tale of how I
saw the light or rather lights and managed to acquire a beautiful pair of
chrome ceiling chandeliers in a rather unorthodox fashion.
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| Charity shop chandeliers |
For
months these lights hung in the window of a local charity shop which I happen
to walk past every day on my way to work.
I’d often stop to admire them, conjuring up a mental picture of what
they might look like hanging up in our refurbished corridor. Sadly for me, the charity shop always closed
early in the afternoons so I was never able to get a closer look.
One
morning to my horror, a sign appeared in the charity shop window announcing the
closure of the store to make way for a new cinema development. My heart fell at the thought of losing sight
of these beautiful lamps which by now had become part of my early morning
commute.
As
luck would have it, a few days later I spotted the shopkeeper in the store at
the crack of dawn busily packing away all the bits and bobs left in the shop
ready for their relocation. There’s no
time to lose I said to myself so I frantically knocked on the glass window and
after executing an elaborate hand signalling mime dance, I convinced him to
open the door.
Not
surprisingly his first words were ‘we’re closed’ as it was 7.30 am but after
hearing my desperate plea, he reluctantly let me in to view the
chandeliers. Covered in a thick coat of
dust and cobwebs, they were every bit as lovely as I’d imagined and in very
good condition considering they’d been hanging in that window for the best part
of the 2 years that I’d been walking past that shop. The deal was done on the spot and I returned
later on in my lunch hour to hand over £50 cash for the pair.
After
a good clean and a bit of fiddling about (but that’s another story), the first
chandelier is now lighting up our world having been saved from the scrap heap
by one woman’s persistence.
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| Shades thick with years of dust |
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| Scrubbed up nice |
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| Will it work? |
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| Lights are on |
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| Saved from the scrap heap |
This just goes to prove - nothing ventured, nothing gained!
