By Leo Cendrowicz/Brussels There is nothing like a Bordeaux, a Chianti or a Riesling to evoke the taste and scent of Europe in a wine glass. The problem, according to the “wine lake” clich. is that the continent is swimming in the stuff, thanks to E.U. farm polices that have sought to keep prices stable by stockpiling unsold wine. The current unsold inventory now adds up to more than a year’s production enough to fill 8,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Next week, however,...
My Home: Author Tasmina Perry
July 4th, 2007
My Home: Author Tasmina Perry
I didn’t want to live here. But when my son was born, we decided it was time to make the move out from London to the big family house. I had my heart set on Richmond because I love the park, but everything was far too expensive. Then we were shown this house in Kingston that backs onto the park so I agreed to view it. From the outside it looks like an ordinary 1920s suburban house and I wasn’t particularly excited. But when I saw this huge glass extension on the kitchen I loved it straight away.
As soon as we moved in, I painted one wall of the kitchen pink, but my husband, John, felt it was a bit too girly, so we have now changed it to scarlet. It’s a great space for cooking and at night, because of all the glass, all you can see is the black outside. It was a bit scary at first but now I love it. You completely forget that the centre of London is only eight miles away. We spend half the day in the kitchen now. We get friends who still live in central London to come over with the promise of taking them to Petersham Nurseries for a fabulous lunch, and then we end up staying here. In the evenings, one of us sits on a bar stool while the other cooks and we discuss characters from my novel: “Oh Karin would never sleep with Marcus” – that sort of thing. Or I tell John where the murder-mystery part of the story is heading and he’ll spot the holes in the plot. It feels like a mini book club sometimes.
I’m a very enthusiastic cook but not a very good one. The first time I invited John round for dinner when we’d just started going out, I baked a cake from a Jane Asher mix and passed it off as my own. Then John said: “I could marry a girl who makes cakes this good.” I felt so guilty I had to go and buy Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.
Decorating houses is all about compromise. The first thing we did was get rid of my husband’s old furniture. He had lots of industrial stuff from his Shoreditch flat. It wasn’t quite right for our first family home. He admitted that, and I agreed to get rid of the pink wall.
One of my other favourite rooms is the sitting room. When we moved in, it was painted orange and had a kind of Moroccan-Thai fusion theme going on. It was a bit too flamboyant and we had to make it more “us”. It’s now taupe with a big leather sofa and a big cream squashy one. There are goatskin rugs on the floorboards and an Art Deco lamp that I found in a flea market in Paris.
It’s important to me to be surrounded by things that mean something. The pictures on the walls are very important. A lot of them are from St Ives in Cornwall. We spent a lot of time there and my heroines tend to be Cornish. But the picture that has pride of place is a print of that Vanity Fair cover with Liam and Patsy. John used to work for the NME at the time of Britpop and I know the photographer who took that picture. I bought a print for John for Christmas with all the photographer’s notes on, and it’s a prized possession.
We’ve got so many books that we had a long room at the side of the house converted into a library. Music is also really important to both of us and we have a sound system that goes into every room, although of course we tend to always play the same albums.
Upstairs we haven’t really done much. The bedroom was a lilac colour that was a bit too feminine for John, and we have redone it in Farrow & Ball “String”. I still have my new glass dressing table, which is the girly bit, and there is a beige cashmere blanket on the bed. There are also huge wardrobes because we have so much stuff, but it’s not nearly enough space. I’m a terrible hoarder. I’ve kept a memory box since I was about 15 that’s full of lots of sentimental things. It’s got out of hand with diaries, photos, old invitations and cards. It’s no longer just a box: it takes up a whole cupboard. We have both also kept a copy of every single magazine we’ve ever worked on – I was at In Style and John at the NME. And I haven’t even mentioned the clothes, which is the point of a wardrobe, isn’t it? I spend far too much on them and I have made a concerted effort this year to cut down. I’ve just given four huge bags to the charity shops but I still have about 40 handbags and 60 pairs of shoes. I have one wardrobe full of lovely stuff like Chanel jackets and Christian Dior coats that I could never throw out. I also went a little bit hormonal when I was pregnant and bought two Chanel bags thinking they would be lovely for my daughter one day. Then I had Fin.
Last summer, I wrote lots of the scenes for Gold Diggers in the garden. I have a wonderful swing with a thatch roof that I call the Tiki Love Seat. I sit there for hours with my laptop. There are big cushions on it, and flocks of parakeets fly around. The story is that they escaped from Shepperton Studios when they were filming African Queen and started breeding in the wild.
I love living here now. It’s a no-through road and there is a real sense of community. We even just had a street party. It’s amazing when I think we only bought this house because we couldn’t afford what we wanted.
After qualifying as a solicitor, Tasmina worked in magazines. Her first novel, ‘Daddy’s Girls’, was a bestseller. ‘Gold Diggers’, is published this month (Harper Collins, 12.99)
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