I need what?

"Oh, you need a three-hundred-pound seat" the brisk female voice on the other end of the phone said after I had explained, as delicately as I could, and without embarrassing either of us, that ... well, let me put it this way, and without being overly euphemistic, both bodily functions could not take place at the same time within the aperture of the seat of the "beside commode" I'd been given when I left hospital. The aesthetic desecration of our Philippe Starck-designed toilet pot caused by this baldly utilitarian object, with its white tubular construction, grey plastic lid and splash guard, was of little consequence compared to the ease promised by its 21-inch-high seat - six inches higher than the one above which it hovered - a promise short-lived in the event, for the reason given above. If I understood that person correctly, this method of assessing the required dimensions of a toilet seat – by the weight of the user - was new to me and, it has got me wondering about what I know.

It is only at times like these, in my case a temporary disability, that it comes upon one that the beautiful rooms one has gone to great lengths to create come up short in one vital aspect - accessibility. I found that much of our furniture, except the bed, no longer worked for me – or rather, with me. Until this week, the fourth since surgery, there has been but one chair – one of a set of four Provençal dining chairs with arms we bought 25 years ago in France – that has been in any way hospitable to my condition. The chairs and sofa in the living room, the library and the bedroom, all by well-known designers and from reputable manufacturers were, variously, too deep, too low, too springy, or too soft - qualities which in normal times may be much appreciated. We got the decoration right, but what we forgot was to make the rooms usable in all sorts of conditions. So, for a month, I have perched like a petulant parson on a dining chair, surrounded by furniture I could not use, immensely thankful for the arms (in more ways than one) that surround and support me.

I sit now at my writing table, in another of those Provençal chairs, propped by a pillow at my back, and though this morning I heard from the surgeon that everything has gone brilliantly and I may drive and fly again, I'm still too wary of the other furniture to try and sit in it. Sit in all I shall, eventually, but the lesson has been learned - function is prime. It is the ergonomics, the universal user-friendliness informing the design of furniture that counts.

This morning I looked around at the surgeon's waiting room and thought again what a difference there is, generally speaking, between the residential side of the interior design profession and the contract side - not necessarily a difference that is universal but one that comes down fundamentally to the training either side receives.  There was so much space, though none wasted, for allowing free movement of wheelchairs, walking frames, and couples side-by-side supporting each other.

At home, when we remodeled, we got our openings – the doorways – right, in that I was able to get the wheelchair and, later, the walking-frame comfortably through them – not something that could be said of many houses around this nation. But where there is a registered architect, a licensed interior designer or an experienced interior decorator involved, there should be no problem with clearances or accessibility in residences, and there will be a universality of design - the rooms will not be hostile environments to those who are in any way, and however temporarily, physically challenged.

Drawings of chairs by Emilio Terry from an article written by Marie-France Boyer for The World of Interiors, November 1987.

Did I really chose?

I'd like to say I'd spent a lot of time in my library over the last week but, given the fact that lying on the bed was, in the beginning, the required means of conducting my life, my library – thanks to the Celt, and much in the manner of his ancestors with the Forest of Dunsinane – came to me.

A supply of books on the bed, and an iPad to hand - what more could be wished for? Probably not much, and certainly not to quite the level of heaven that Sydney Smith enjoyed, though I do enjoy foie gras, but I'm afraid I slept through most of it. During my more lucid awake moments, having spent some time looking at interior design blogs and magazines, I have mixed feelings about what I saw.

A couple of weeks ago in my post Rapture and End-Times, I discussed what I see as the likely online present and future of magazines and books. In my last post I wrote that I would, because of its timely connection with what I had written, like to discuss this New York Times article about four online interior design magazines' thriving present.

The four are Lonny, Rue, High Gloss and Matchbook. That they are thriving is good news, and that they are positioned solely towards twenty-something females with little disposable income is, to my mind, undeniable. I question whether this positioning is entirely a good thing for only too soon will that group find itself the forty- or fifty-somethings and I wonder if the format, heavily reliant on advertorial and the worshipful prose of celebzines, is viable enough to grow or change with its targeted demographic? Or will there perhaps be new cohorts of twenty-somethings following behind to take their place? But perhaps that is not the point, for it occurs to me that such narrowly-targeted magazines may not be designed for the long-term - and are ephemeral, perhaps, as anything in the world of fashion.

That these magazines do not include me by gender, age, income, interest or scope is not a matter of particular concern. Their value to me, whether here today or gone tomorrow, is that I do not pay for them and I can dip in occasionally – very occasionally – without any thought of disposing of yet another pile of coated, printed, polluting paper.

On the subject of physical magazines: a couple of days ago I received a communication in which I was thanked for choosing to be part of a magazine's Continuous Service Renewal and as I'd recently been notified, my renewal has been processed and payment was now due. 

I'm not really sure I chose to be part of the Continuous Service Program and I'm pretty sure I did not receive any such renewal processing notification and, now I look for it, neither can I find a telephone number to call to ask a customer service representative precisely when my subscription actually ends. Over the last few months I've found this magazine increasingly uninteresting - pretty much the same reaction I have to the four online magazines mentioned above and generally speaking for the same reasons - and had decided not to renew and to find I've chosen, unbeknownst to me, to renew my subscription really does make me even more determined not to enclose my check and return it with the invoice in the pre-addressed envelope. 

So, back to where I began, in a library with the past and looking towards the future. A few days ago, I bought my first iBook, William Shawcross' Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother: The Official Biography – and I am totally sold on e-publication.  I fully expect my e-library to grow rapidly if there are enough e-books to satisfy my predilection for history and biography. Biography, by the way, is a genre I have come to appreciate only in recent years – and I'm still surprised that I do, given that I'm not overly interested in the inner lives of anyone, however salacious or celebrated. As I wrote that I glanced at my bookshelves and to my astonishment found many a biography - Billy Baldwin; Catherine of Aragon; Edmund White; John Adams; Elizabeth I; Louis XIV; Mrs Henry Parish; Brooke Astor; Alan Bennett; George, Nicholas and Wilhelm; David Hockney; Nigel Slater; Elizabeth David - to name but fifteen and to say nothing of the monographs about artists, architects and interior designers inhabiting the shelves. Ah well, such is self-delusion!

Real estate, or square footage, is not something one has to consider with e-publishing. Our household is long beyond the point at which we should have stopped buying books and I have considered buying an additional bookcase – a long, low one for the living room – but have yet to find anything that would, aesthetically speaking, fit. Not being one for stacks of books by chairs, under plant pots or vases, or even stacked as decoration on tables, I have decided to edit - take out and dispose of those books neither of us actually has any more interest in. I have begun with the vanity-publishing - decorator monographs of interchangeable interiors and egotism. Some of these are now for sale on Amazon Marketplace. We'll see how they fare.

The room above is Emilio Terry's library of books and musical scores for Jean de Polignac, photographed by Robert Doisneau for Les réussites de la décoration française, 1950 - 1960, Collection Maison et Jardin, Condé Nast S.A. Editions de Pont Royal, 1960

P.S. One of the more interesting aspects of looking at interiors is the art to be found in them - for example, the Edouard Vuillard portrait of Jean de Polignac - a subject for future posts, I'm certain.

Poof!

Losing a post and comments as I did last week rather took me aback. The Twang's the Thang sorta went poof and retreated into the cloud whence I've daily been expecting it to reappear. I understood the Blogger team would restore data that was removed but precisely a week later it has not so I guess it's time to stop pouting and move on.

When the Celt suggested that we take our iPads on vacation rather than schlepp books as we would normally do, to my surprise I agreed with barely a demur - which means I refused point blank and then thought about it and admitted he was right. I'd like to say that is a syndrome I've grown out of over the years but, at best, I've just got quicker at admitting he's right.

Yet I didn't like the idea, however practical, because an e-book is not a book as I have known a book to be, and I like books. By which I mean, of course, I have a fetish about owning books - a fetish I find hard to admit despite the fact that, as I said in my post Soignée a couple of weeks ago, I sit surrounded by about 125 square feet of them in the room, once the second bedroom, we call the library.

It's a rather 19th-century name for a room of books, library, and one that smacks of municipal and philanthropic do-gooding. Book-room is even more archaic - on a par with looking-glass, though that fact has not stopped me using either on occasion. Whatever I call the room, if I were to lose its contents, my life would be bereft for I have great pride in ownership, great confidence in the emblematic and talismanic roles books play, and I take enormous pleasure in being able to take a book from our shelves, browse, read or research - precisely as I use the internet, it occurs to me.

My morning read is no longer a newspaper and neither is it, generally speaking, a book. I begin my day with a smile, a cup of coffee and The Daily Beast. Ten years ago, I read a book. Today I am more likely to be looking online and am constantly amazed at how much is available at the tip of a cursor and how much I rely on it - much as I relied on Blogger always being there.

I'm told everything is moving to the cloud, wherever that may be. I look out of the window and no evidence of the internet do I see but I'll take on trust that The Blue Remembered Hills are out there somewhere, floating. How aptly named this insubstantial vehicle. Losing a post is but the most minor of happenings in the technological scheme of things, but if that cloud ever goes poof .....

The room above is Emilio Terry's library at Chateau Rochecotte, photographed by Anthony Denney for Les réussites de la décoration française, 1950 - 1960, Collection Maison & Jardin, Condé Nast S.A. Editions de Pont Royal, 1960