A Window-Look

To find an old Beverley Nichols book is to find a treasure to be savored. My latest find is his 1933 A Thatched Roof, his story of the 1540 cottage in the English countryside named Always. I am never sure if the houses in Nichols' books are built of real stone and slate, or made up of whole cloth, but I could happily move into the rooms of his house and settle down as cosily as do his cats named One and Four.

After Nichols has all of the cottage walls whitewashed, he takes a favorite piece of his Bristol blue glass to London and together he and the Bristol blue glass choose fabrics, furniture and china.

"Do you like these curtains, oh blue Bristol glass," I would say.

And always I received an immediate answer.

You would be surprised at the number of curtains it did not like."

Beverley Nichols A Thatched Roof

Doesn't this piece of Bristol blue glass look pretty in the window of the blog, Random Distractions? Please drop in and visit Maureen http://randomdistractions.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bristol+blue+glass at Random Distractions. Here is another picture showing more of her blue glass collection.

Wouldn't you love to have that deep windowsill? Explore Random Distractions where Maureen blogs about the books she is reading and the music she loves, the children's aprons she makes for her grandchildren, her knitting projects, and their excursions around Devon. And absolutely do not miss the gorgeous Harvest Loaf she baked on September 27, 2012's post. I love being an armchair visitor to her blog and I'm sure Beverley Nichols would like peering out her window.

Windows were the first board I created on Pinterest, before I ever decided to try to blog. I have a thing for windows. So did Mr. Nichols. Also from A Thatched Roof, he writes:

"To me, all windows are magic casements. Whether they are bright or dim, whether they give onto green lawns or blink at barren bricks, or are shaded or sparkling, the life I see through them has a sweeter pattern. There is something terrifying about the wide spaces which the eye enfolds in the open air; and there are times in a man's life when he must always be darting his head from this side to that, watching from the corner of his eye to assure himself that the Enemy is not creeping towards him from the dim distance. But when he looks at life through a window he is safe."

Nichols goes on to point out that one can "frame" the view one wants through a window. "With a tilt of the head, a cloud is banished, a green branch dances into view, the church steeple lifts its gray finger in the foreground."

I do this when standing in front of our windows. By looking one way I avoid seeing the big red dump truck parked over to one side. We rarely use this in construction jobs anymore as it is easier to have dumpsters delivered and picked up when filled. So the truck sits there in my view unless I look the other way. 

On the south side of the house sits the huge propane gas tank that wild ferns mostly hide, except in winter. I don't like looking out at that either, but, as with the dump truck, it is sometimes a necessity. The gas logs and heaters it fuels come in handy when the electric power goes off in the winter.

Through another window I look up to the root cellar built into the hillside. We know that one time, back in the 1930s, there was a tiny house built upon the roof of the root cellar because two handsome cousins in their 80s dropped by a few years ago to tell us they stayed with their grandmother here during the summers, and their bedroom was a tiny house on top of the root cellar. Think of that! Now I avoid that window until we save the money the stone mason has quoted us to restore it.

Have you accomplished what is our goal? That of having something pretty to look at outside every single window? Or do you tilt your head to avoid something ugly?

And I wonder, what do you take shopping with you to choose curtains the way Beverley Nichols took his favorite piece of Bristol blue glass? This old woven throw is what I took with me when we moved here to Valley View.