FENG SHUI, OR THE STRANGE TALE OF THE KITCHEN DRAWERS

The Phantom Opening Drawers



And the Feng Shui Solution


I HAVE GOOD reason to be thankful to what I saw referred to with admirable brevity on someone’s post the other day as ‘members of The Coo’. Very good at solving problems are members of the Coo. ‘How do I de-mist my double-glazed windows,’ I asked once, ‘without buying new ones, that is?’

‘Drill a tiny hole on the inside,’ came Countrymousie’s almost instantaneous response. I am sure this is just the thing to do but as, lazily, I haven’t yet got around to finding a drill to make tiny holes in thick glass, I can’t report the result, either to you, or to Mousie herself, who fearing perhaps that my window might shatter, seems to be hibernating deep in her country mouse hole. Or perhaps she is listening: if you are, Mousie, it is only a matter of time. The wheels in the Somerville household may grind slow, but they grind very small. I shall get around to it.

There was another matter on which I wanted Coo advice, but I didn’t quite know how to put the question. I wasn’t asking something personally embarrassing - like how I might rid myself of carbuncles, or how I should address a visiting bishop. No, it was the ultra simple question of how might I ensure that the drawers beside my kitchen sink stayed shut when I shut them and didn’t slowly open again of their own accord, as if they had become apprentice extras in a horror movie.

I have tried magnetic strips and repositioning the contents of the drawers without success; the only thing that worked seemed to be a piece of kitchen roll folded and wedged hard in the drawer top. Even this didn’t work always. After ten minutes the drawer would slowly open, as if pushed from inside by an unseen hand.

Nonetheless, unlikely as it may seem, the Coo, (our Jane in this case) have solved the problem. All that was involved was a little elementary Feng Shui.

Jane, as you doubtless know, is an expert in these dark arts. She has written an absolutely brilliant book on this and other things to do with transforming your untidy and cluttered lump of hollow brick and concrete into a home.

One of the things she says is that you should learn to talk to your house. If you do this correctly your house will talk back to you. Being a rational being, not on medication, with no tendency to imagine that I am Don Quixote, I was sceptical of this advice. It sounded like playing the ouija board, but without the mock solemnity and dim lighting.

Imagine my surprise therefore when the house began to talk back to me - and not in the sort of belligerent male voice that I had been expecting, ‘Why have you been neglecting me? What do you care?’ But in a rather pleasant, refined but humble, maid of all work sort of voice - a cross between Cinderella and Honeysuckle Weeks. Rather than complaining about my general household neglect, the house instead was eager to please and sorry that she didn’t look smarter. When I mentioned new paint she practically fainted in anticipation.

This may have been a mistake! For she jabbers at me now in the manner of a three-year old that has been promised an unspecified trip to the zoo. Nevertheless, she is not tiresome, and is friendly to animals. She realises that paint is rarely the first item in a rejuvenation process. There are de-cluttering operations and cleaning operations and repairing operations to be undertaken first, including getting the mist out of the windows.

Now Jane’s book also pointed out that you don’t get very far, Feng Shui wise, in a house with missing corners and it soon became obvious that the house was missing two corners - corresponding to the marriage and the knowledge areas of my life. Book in hand, this I have set out to rectify.

Jane suggests that a quick ‘cure’ for such a deficit is a plant in a big solid tub strategically placed where the corner should be. With the knowledge corner, this is proving hard. Quite an area of house is missing. The spot where the corner ought to be is occupied by the car.

Moving the car and placing an isolated pot in the middle of the tarmac drive just looks silly. In any case, judging from the quantity of books we have quite enough knowledge to stock a shop. So I have compromised and half-moved the car and half-filled in the corner. Whether this will make me half-witted remains to be seen.

But the missing marriage corner, on the inside of which coincidentally are to be found the annoying self-opening drawers, was easy to complete. I dragged a pot of yellow wallflowers into the spot - just to see how it would look. ‘Grand,’ said J.

I didn’t think much more about it until I realised that the kitchen drawers were no longer opening of their own accord. ‘Impossible!’ I thought, every fibre of my rational self protesting in my ear. But it was true. And they haven’t opened since - by themselves at any rate. Not only that but J and I haven’t had a cross-word since, which must be something of a record, nice people though we are. So that’s Feng Shui 1 - Rationality Nil.

And for those who read the blog I wrote some weeks ago about books tumbling out of a bookcase of their own volition I have to point out that the bookcase bears the same relation to the knowledge corner as the kitchen drawers did to the marriage corner. Whether my pot moving will stop further book falls we shall have to see.