Finger painting

One freezing cold day in January, full of enthusiasm, we took the children to see the house. They walked around in a kind of catatonic trance, speechless, then in a rather muted tone said that they preferred to play outside in the garden. Afterwards we asked them if they like the house and, as one, they looked at us as if to say 'You have finally, definitively, lost the plot'. 'No', said A, speaking for them all. 'It's absolutely horrible.' We felt slightly crushed, and it wasn't until later that I realised that we had forgotten to mention that we would be doing it up before we actually moved in.

To be honest, it's hard for an adult to summon up enough imagination to be able to picture the derelict house in front of their eyes transformed into a comfortable home. I shouldn't have expected the children to be able to accomplish that feat. I decided that it would be best not to make them come to the house too often, to avoid total morale collapse. I am occasionally forced to bring them along with me when I have to see the plumber or whatever after school, and when I do that I endeavour to make them see how far it's coming along, but I's exclamation last Tuesday - 'It looks like a bomb hit it!' - suggests that he hasn't yet developed the eye.

Yesterday though I enlisted their help in painting sheets of sugar paper with Farrow and Ball paints to test the infinite variations of white that we are going to choose between. They enthusiastically set to, dipping their big brushes into dimity little pots labelled Hague Blue, Rectory Red, Great White, James White, off White and House White, expressing surprise and delight at the genuine differences between all these shades. When they had finished they spent ages consulting the colour cards and choosing which colours they want their rooms painted. I've managed to persuade R to have Borrowed Light, A wants Pavillion Blue and I wants, god help us, either black or crimson. Incipient Goth tendencies, anyone? It's tempting to say no, but that doesn't seem quite right, so I've said he can have a single wall in either.

It turns out that paint in France is either top quality imported or a really rubbish and yet amazingly expensive synthetic domestic product. I think that's because, unlike in England where the upper classes traditionally favoured paint, historically the French aristocracy and later on the bourgeoisie favoured wallpaper or, for the truly wealthy and aesthetically-challenged, fabric printed with small-scale monochome shepherdesses, a look that mysteriously persists in this age of decorative enlightenment amongst extremely wealthy Americans trying for that oh so sophisticated European look.

So there isn't really a tradition of quality paint or historic colours for interior paints in France. I suppose that's why all elegant Parisian apartments are painted dead white all over - a lovely elegant look if you don't have children and have had your mess gene surgically removed. Farrow and Ball is twice the price it is in England and even cheap paint from a big hardware store costs about what F and B costs in the UK - ie for synthetic paint in really nasty colours you could get delicious F and B if you can be bothered to make the trip. So it's kind of inevitable that when we go back to London in April to get the car serviced and MOTed (because yes we still have an English UK registered car that we can't quite work out what to do with) we'll load it up with paint. As well as lights - I've splurged on a few lovely lights that cost up to £300 less in England because of the drop in value of sterling. Leading to a recapitulation of the clouds and silver lining theory - although we lost a lot of money converting our money from sterling to Euro in January (having failed to notice that sterling had done a nose dive since last November) we will claw back a tiny fraction of it on buying our paints and our lights in England! Every little helps!