Susan Morrison: Negotiating the first rung on the property ladder – blankets and all
Following a herculean effort on the savings front, my daughter has pulled off the near impossible for today's young folks and bought her first flat. Her brother is going halfies.
It's a good start on the property ladder. I suspect our family is part salmon and feels the need to to return to my ancestral lands, because it's in Glasgow.
Naturally, we are all chuffed. Furnishings must be planned and acquired.
Back in the days when a flat in Leith cost less than a Premier League footballer, families would scour cupboards to dig out bits and pieces to fledgling home owners. Someone always had those huge, heavy wool blankets. No-one ever seemed to actually buy these. They just seemed to circulate around families.
They turned out to be just the thing in a tenement flat with windows that apparently had been made for an entirely different property. Sadly, those big ol’ blankets went out of style. I can’t remember what I did with them, which is a shame, because people do buy them now, and at a price that makes fashionistas wince.
Some new home-owners back then might hit it lucky. Auntie May might just have bought a new three piece suite. Her old one would do sterling duty in that new house.
That sofa sat three big men comfortably. You could still see the imprints of the bahookies of cousins Bobby, Mark and Steve as proof. Obviously, it would be a tight squeeze into a tiny tenement living room, not to mention the two massive armchairs. And let's not forget the pouffe.
Yes, it might mean that you could walk across the entire living room without ever actually touching the floor, but it was free.
Auntie May had always been a one for a bright colour. The seventies were her decade. That three-piece suite was her pride and joy, entirely upholstered in a particularly vibrant green and yellow swirling Paisley pattern. She’d not long had the pouffe redone in a riot of brocade.
But no wonder throws became a thing.
When we moved into our first home, my mum gave us a vacuum cleaner which she had inherited from Great Auntie Suzie. God knows where she got it from. It was practically steam driven. The entire building shook when you fired that beast up to hoover But, by thunder, those carpets were sooked clean.
Young folk these days, however, have fought harder for their new nests. These kids are no Second Hand Roses. Only new will do, and why not? They've worked hard. Son and daughter hit Ikea like Vikings berserk for home furnishings.
I offered to buy an iron and an ironing table, a vital feature of every home, I would have thought. This was meant with a sort of polite but blank expression. Apparently young people don't iron clothes anymore. The mere suggestion of ironing newly washed bedding was greeted with downright hysteria.
They're discovering they have to think of everything. Mugs, kettles and plates. The drawers that mum and dad spent years filling with teaspoons, kitchen scissors and that useful little hand whisk suddenly aren't available. They'll have to fill their own cupboards with towels and duvet covers.
Having said that, I've noticed a sudden gap in my own bedding supplies. Could have sworn I had two white satin stripe double duvet sets…