How to love you kitchen cupboards

Our kitchen is scruffy.

The windowsill cradles an array of dessicated cacti, swagged with dusty spiders’ webs. Oh, yes, I know I could grab a cloth and clean the spiky little blighters, but I don’t. It’s not because I’m a terrible housewife, though that is certainly true, having always thought there were better things to do with my time- use this blog to rattle on about being a bad housewife, for one. But the webs also stay because I don’t want to evict their creators and (being an old Goth at heart) I like the feeling that I live in a Haunted House fairground ride.

Our kitchen units were installed in the days of Bananarama, shoulder pads and mobile phones the size of house bricks, so the cupboard doors drop at the hinges now and the drawers sag so that you have to complete a clever push-down-and-pull-out manoeuvre just to open them- a move so complex it could become a new Olympic sport.

You won’t see granite worktops or marble slabs for making pastry. Our worktops are a plasticised artificial wood, complete with painted grain and knots, just to add some class. We don’t have steel racks for pots of herbs or bottles of wine, we don’t have spotlights or a portable island for chopping lemon grass and mooli. And it’s mint green- a misguided attempt on my part to make it bright and airy. Unfortunately, when the sun shines, the paintwork bounces the light, so we all look like we’re suffering from jaundice.

Worried it all sounds pretty depressing? Then look at the cupboard doors.

No, not the exposed chipboard corners and the appointment cards for dental check-ups– look at the pieces of flapping, damp-crinkled paper. There’s a certificate my son received from school for supporting other students in their work: a photograph of the solar system reproduced in flower petals: a self-portrait my son drew in felt tip pen, his face so bright pink, it looks as though he’s been dipped in beetroot juice: a drawing of a Dalek: a drawing of an alien called ‘The Consumer’: a piece he wrote in admiration of the amazing Mae Jemison .

And then there’s the photographs: my lovely son, aged three wearing a stripy woollen hat that’s slipped rakishly over one eye: the same lovely son, aged a few months old, with the biggest, maddest smile and a pint of dribble splattered over his delighted face.

So, it’s tatty, full of spiders and needs gutting, but thanks to my son, the kitchen is a joyful place to be.

Thanks to the Daily Post for the prompt!