drawer

OK, so here's the thing. I cannot wait to have a house. Not in a I-must-have-a-house-and-make-homemade-bread-and-lentil-soup-in-order-to-be-a-real-woman kind of way. Just in a I-can't-wait-to-decorate-and-fill-it-with-random-and-cosy-stuff-and-have-a-cat-and-a-bedroom-bigger-than-a-shoebox kind of way.

To that end, for the last little while I've been collecting odds and ends for my Bottom Drawer. This wondrous concept was introduced to me by my ma a couple of years ago when we were in some shop and I happened to say something like: "Ooh, those plates are nice." Then she said, oh fateful words, "You should buy them for your Bottom Drawer." Turns out there's this whole world of pre-marital hoarding that I didn't know about - apparently it's a tradition so antiquated that even blessed Wiki doesn't have a definition for it. However, I did find one that described this concept as: 

               n (Brit) a young woman's collection of clothes, 
               linen, cutlery, etc., in anticipation of marriage.

Now, tragic as this inevitably makes me sound, I do in fact now possess a Bottom Drawer. Well, more a Sprawling Collection, but still.

To be honest it's less in anticipation of marriage than the more-comfortingly-imminent hope of owning a house. Or, at least, long-term renting one. So, in anticipation of said house-ownership I now have a delightful array of, well, mostly mugs, plates and bowls actually (for the aforementioned mismatched-chic). The last two trips I made to buy birthday presents for friends may have just happened to lead me into the home and kitchen section of Fenwick's and might possibly have lead me to the latest handful of really very reasonable culinary appendages.

So, say what you like, I shall continue this wee collection with which I can festoon my humble abode. And, if nothing else, I can live in the vain hope that perhaps it'll make me vaguely more marriage-material: "It's alright chaps, at least she comes with her own crockery."