I just love Ikea, for all sorts of reasons, but especially when I catch an unexpected bargain or special offer.
Last week in the Nottingham Ikea I was fishing for those little bits and pieces - the living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom accoutrements - that they can provide and that work and are cheap and that turn a new house into an old home.
At their 'bargain corner' at the checkout they had a pile of remaindered coffee table books.
And when I flipped through UK AT HOME: A celebration of where we live and love,I just HAD to buy a copy. It was only £1 ... and it was gorgeous!
UK at Home is a beautifully photographed coffee table book showing a huge cross section of British people in their daily home lives. The book has been sponsored by Ikea, which perhaps explains their generosity in selling it for £1 (or £2, if you choose the price sticker on the other side - it had two stickers on it). Or perhaps it's simply been remaindered rather more quickly than the publishers intended.
Apart from the 200 or so pages of beautiful photojournalism, there are seven essays on the theme of 'home' by noted authors:
- The Mystery of Home - Alexander McCall Smith
- The Trinkets of Expatriate Life - Simon Winchester
- The Idea of Home - Alain de Botton
- Home and Memory - Blake Morrison
- The Unlikely Home - Jackie Kay
- Leaving Home - Jeanette Winterson
- Homebound - Will Self
I was disappointed that only two (single) people were shown living on boats. No families, no cruising retired couples, and not much of the waterways.
Mike Goldwater photographs South Dock Marina in London (including a riveting double-page spread of a lady hanging out washing to dry on her old navy boat, and my interest has absolutely nothing to do with her sensational figure; oh all right, it does.)
Meanwhile Thomas Brandi photographed Fernley Tancock (now, there's a one-of-a-kind name) on his 'houseboat' [sic] at the top of Foxton Locks. Not a very representative selection of life afloat.
At £1 (or £2 - I didn't check on the bill which price I was charged) it's worth going to your local Ikea for this book alone.
I especially loved the dustjacket. It's a double front cover, each one upside down to the other, and sporting radically different concepts of home life.
One side shows a cheerful mother wheelbarrowing her sons through her rural garden, while the other one - upside down - has a picture of "Tinky and Twinkle Troughton, sisters in a punk band called The Fairies... known throughout London for randomly granting wishes to complete strangers."
I take my hat off to the publishers for creating a dust jacket appealing to all sorts. On the one hand the book will win over the sort of homebodies whose ideal of home life is to play with your children in the garden.
On the other hand, just turn it over and it'll appeal to those whose idea of home is lying back on their red duvet, with preternaturally beautiful fairies in party frocks kneeling astride them, granting their wishes.
Those wishes, incidentally, cannot include the fairies themselves, but that's fine by me. My wish would be to live on a boat and have a woman hanging out my washing to dry. We all have different ideas of what makes a perfect home.
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