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Queen's not so cosy home - do you have any clothes that match your furnishings?

(84 Posts)
JessM Sat 28-Sept-13 21:03:18

Love this photo. Second one in a year of her in a room with a v cheap electric fire. So obviously she is concerned about her fuel bills like many other pensioners.
Love the skirt that matches the carpet. Do you have any clothes that match any of your curtains or carpets?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430297/Pictured-The-Queens-sitting-room-Balmoral--photo-great-grandson-George-takes-pride-place.html

JessM Sun 29-Sept-13 20:54:24

oh yes Baubles you are probably not alone in this.
I once moved into a house that had been done out all over in a Laura Ashley green print with little white flowers, including walls, curtains and the ceiling of the main bedroom.

Gally Sun 29-Sept-13 21:29:30

I've still got Laura Ashley paper in bedroom4 which we put up in 1981. I can't bear to change it - it was DD3's nursery. It was obviously made to last! wink

merlotgran Sun 29-Sept-13 21:39:50

Wasn't it an old Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders sketch where a husband returns home and can't find his wife in the living room because her Laura Ashley dress matches all the soft furnishings?

Penstemmon Sun 29-Sept-13 22:08:44

my favourite is the coat of arms hearth rug..might start making one for me and DH.. what will ours look like!hmm

Deedaa Sun 29-Sept-13 22:11:43

You always had to be careful with Laura Ashley smile

I used to have a long green brocade Per Una skirt that always made me feel like Scarlett O'Hara dressed up in the green curtains.

gracesmum Sun 29-Sept-13 22:42:42

Not to mention looking like the children from The Sound of Music? grin

Aka Sun 29-Sept-13 22:45:18

deedaa grin
My sister-in-law has no dress sense yet makes all her own clothes, apparently from old curtains. Not a good look.

Aka Sun 29-Sept-13 22:46:06

Actually I think her latest skirt looks more like a lampshade.

Aka Sun 29-Sept-13 22:48:57

It's the tassels that do it.

Ariadne Mon 30-Sept-13 06:10:27

It does look like a second hand shop, doesn't it? A very boring one too.

And it also looks very uncomfortable - nowhere to lie back with your feet up. How sad to be so rich, yet cold and uncomfortable, and to sit in such an inhospitable room.

absent Mon 30-Sept-13 07:20:40

Surely this is a public room, however hideous, not the private put-your-feet-up and lie back one.

Iam64 Mon 30-Sept-13 07:35:01

Absent - respect on the trouser making. I have a treasured photograph of me, my two sisters, and my oldest daughter, then aged about 6, all wearing long Laura Ashley frocks, in clashing prints, all with long flowing hair. It's a real time frame. I loved the photograph of Queenie, looking like I often feel - just go home will you! Her cluttered room, expensive antiques next to what look like stuff I try (and fail) to leave in charity shops or at car boot sales. We stayed in an old manor house with a big group of friends recently - the furnishings were strikingly similar to those in this photograph. An overwhelming collection of mis matched pieces - fabulous.

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 07:39:09

I do not believe the queen's Balmoral rooms, public or private, are insufficiently heated. That wee heater is, as I said earlier, for extra heat, on top of the central heating. And it's only there because it's less messy (and she can even plug it in and switch it on herself) than having a coal fire in that fireplace.

Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to spend a winter in an old house in the highlands.

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 07:44:18

I have recently worn out, after wearing them solidly for four or five years, two pairs of trousers (baggy, naturally, and with huge pockets) I made from some curtains which had hung in my first Oxfordshire house for seven years and my second Oxfordshire house for almost eight years. Navy blue background and large, rather Jacobean florals. Lots of people said they liked them. Even people I didn't know. Young hippy types mainly who, after asking me where I got them and being told that they were my recycled curtains, said "Cool!"

Never did want to dress the same as everyone else.

JessM Mon 30-Sept-13 07:48:28

Aren't aristocrats made of sterner stuff than us mere mortals bags ?
And one only has to look at the size of Buck House.... would one squander hundreds of ££ a years on keeping the servants warm? grin
Have to report that, according to one of the weekend paper supplements, kilts are bang on trend! Which just goes to prove that if you keep your clothes long enough they will come back into fashion again and again.grin

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 08:04:05

No. Don't be silly, jess. Besides, are you suggesting HM (or her housekeeper) is a mean employer and doesn't look after her employees properly?

That said, I expect you'd find my house cold. I'm not an aristocrat.

Have you ever even visited Scotland?

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 08:45:27

I'm also surprised at the 'classist' stereotyping coming from one who objects, quite rightly, to other kinds of injurious stereotyping. Just saying. Because I find it bloody irritating.

JessM Mon 30-Sept-13 09:24:37

bags this is not meant to be a serious thread, hence the grin. grin
Also I don't think the aristocracy need anyone to spring to their defence do they? grin
She is obviously careful with her money otherwise she would have more expensive electric fires. grin grin

j08 Mon 30-Sept-13 09:26:22

I would have thought they could have lit a coal fire. hmm

Taking parsimony a bit too far. IMO.

j08 Mon 30-Sept-13 09:28:30

That's probably not a huge room. I would think it is her own private sitting room. They were staying as personal guests. Very bad manners to get your i-phone out and snap a pic.

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 09:29:19

Well, your 'humour' in this thread still pisses me off, jess. You wouldn't let someone making sexist stereotype 'jokes' off the hook, would you? No difference, really. One rule of behaviour for all.

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 09:30:57

Indeed, jings, or even wood. But maybe it is a room that isn't used much.

Bet they have North Sea gas central heating though. More efficient than coal fires.

merlotgran Mon 30-Sept-13 09:42:09

We've got one of those heaters in our living room. I whack it on for an hour in the morning just to take the chill off. No point in lighting the woodburner or switching on expensive central heating until absolutely necessary.

Nice to know I'm up there with the aristocracy grin

thatbags Mon 30-Sept-13 09:59:42

We have one exactly like it too, merlot. I use it when I can't sleep and come down to read during cold nights.

JessM Mon 30-Sept-13 10:00:02

Sorry about that bags - Gn gets a bit serious sometimes and I suppose my feeble attempts to add a bit of lighthearted nonsense cannot please everyone. Thank you for the tweet by the way.
She could probably afford to treat herself to a fancier fire
e.g.
www.gr8fires.co.uk/dimplex-living-art-remote