in praise of chucking up pictures

and why perfect is the enemy of the good

“We’re coming over to hang your stuff,” Georgie said.

Her boyfriend Ben nodded.

“How’s Sunday?”

We were sitting at the pub, having a drink, talking about the new flat I’d moved to just around the corner.

I objected at first. The flat’s just a rental, I told them. A temporary perch for a year or two as opposed to a forever home. Eventually the house would be sold and I’d buy an old wreck, maybe get the two of them to help me fix it up. Georgie’s an architect and Ben’s a builder. They met just a couple of months earlier, in the pub where we were sitting, at the very same table in fact. Got to chatting then laughing and eventually Ben asked if Georgie wanted to come back to his house and feed the tortoises he keeps in his backyard. She did, as it turned out.

“I can’t be bothered,” I said. “My whole life’s in flux. I have no wifi, my clothes are in bin bags. I don’t even have a fucking parking permit yet.”

But Georgie and Ben shook their heads. They were emphatic, even bossy.

“You have to just chuck it up,” Ben said.

“The last time I moved I hung everything before I even unpacked my kitchen,” Georgie said. “What’s that saying? The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

They clinked glasses. I relented.

Sure enough, Sunday evening around six Georgie and Ben turned turned up at the flat with a box of gluten free chocolate biscuits, power drill and a small dog named Peppa. The cat, Thomas Cromwell, Ratter of the Exchequer, dove under Frank’s bed and glowered as his older bother fed Peppa a biscuit. I opened a bottle of white and put on Jane Birkin’s cover of Harvest Moon, and continued unpacking the kitchen as Ben and Georgie rifled through the stacks of paintings and framed photographs on the floor.

“Know where you them?” she asked.

I shrugged and said I didn’t have a clue.

Just a few days earlier I’d removed the pictures from the walls of the family home. I’d tried to think where I might hang them but even contemplating the question made me want to lay down and take a nap.

“Okay,” Georgie said. “I’ll choose.”