When I Moved Proper over here to Texas, nearly all my stuff stayed behind in England. Partly because I am just not enough into Stuff that it feels worth spending that sort of money transporting it thousands of miles, partly because it was a good opportunity to clear out and start again, and partly because, these days, stuff, especially the sort of stuff I seem to like, is cheaper to buy than the fuel it costs to move. I sometimes wonder whether, if I was extremely rich, I would still refuse to spend more than $100 on any single piece of furniture, but not for long. Yes, I would, because I am a vintage person, not a new stuff person, and I’ve been a vintage person since that 30s rocking chair with the ripped William Morris fabric cover that was 50p from a little junk shop in the English town where I mostly grew up when I was 13.

Second-hand is better value and, if you enjoy that sort of thing, more fun. My two favourite bargains this year are the huge late Victorian wardrobe ($50) and the 70s/80s daybed ($100). The daybed is a particular joy, because I have been studying sofas for the past seven or eight years, and it is not just extremely well-made, posh and well preserved, but also exactly what I have been wanting, and completely impossible to buy in any modern version. You probably wouldn’t go, “Wow!” or anything, but you wouldn’t get backache from using it, and it definitely isn’t ugly. The ugliness of most sofas these days offends my eyeballs. I mean, why?

Someone should start an “ugly sofas” blog. They’d get a lot of readers, and educate the public.

But sofas are difficult to buy second-hand, because unlike wardrobes, they wear out. I like old 70s-type ones in beige as well, for lounging on and throwing out and replacing later on, but the seats do die.

So, there are three kinds of sofa I would buy new:

1. A plain square-framed either wicker or wooden sofa, with big square white cushions.
2. A dark brown corduroy velvet square-framed sofa, either sectional (ie going round a corner) or extra-long.

(These two would go with anything. Good furniture should always go with anything else good. I do not believe in decorating schemes- taste is all you need.)

3. Something slightly curvy and boudoirish in deep pink velvet, but that would only be if I had a huge warehouse apartment or a big hacienda somewhere, full of other kinds of expensive flash vintagey things- chandeliers, stained-glass windows, huge gilt mirrors from the former home of Marie Antoinette, enormous Persian carpets. Giant polished wooden 30s shop cabinets. You know what I mean. The same as now, but with a higher volume level.

Just got to do the “get rich” thing first. It’s on my list.

This post was actually going to be about second-hand books, not sofas, but whatever.