Mad decorators

My husband's just floated the idea of black wallpaper in his study. I don't usually issue vetos, but this time did, foot firmly down and voice raised. I had enough of my mother's sometimes mad ideas of wall decor and she would redecorate every six months or so - an outcome of her frustration and lost dreams of going to Art School, I'm sure.

One time she painted the kitchen scarlet "so it seemed warm in winter." It drove the whole family crazy within days, we all complained and even she finally conceded it was too much. It was soon re-painted in a very cool cream.

Yet she had some fabulous successes. One was redecorating the living room. She'd found some rolls of wallpaper handprinted with big trails of white camellias and their muted green leaves and just a touch of the palest pinks and yellows in the petals, all on a very pale silvery-grey background. She painted the walls the same pale grey, then hung the paper in blocks so that a good depth of the painted parts of the walls acted as a frame. She then found some satin-striped wallpaper the same shade as the palest greens of the leaves, cut it along the stripes into narrowish strips and pasted those up as a frame to the flowered paper. With that, white-painted woodwork and curtains of the same green as the wallpaper border, the effect was superb. It was much admired by friends, relatives and neighbours and did her ego no end of good.

The craze to redecorate died back when she took up oil painting again in her late fifties, exhibited and sold them thereafter. There was probably no time to spend on walls after that. Moral? Don't frustrate talent.