Russell Square and Around

 

(Russell Square is right by a large chunk of Academic London: SOAS, Birkbeck, a Law Institute I didn't even know existed, Senate House, the UCL School of Pharmacy and Royal Free Hospital, with the LSE and Kings College down the road, and bits of UCL scattered all over the place.)

I have no innate talent for interior design, decoration and styling, but there are people who aren't professional designers who do. I have to read a book. The one that made sense to me this time around was Leslie Banker's Think Like A Decorator The pictures are pure decorator pornography, as in all those books, but the text is actually quite practical. At one point she explains that those photos are of rooms that have been re-arranged, styled to within an inch of their lives, and then had the power points, light switches and other intrusions Photoshopped out. But then there was the remark about thinking through the exact order you do things. For instance, when do you wallpaper the narrow corridor to a bedroom that needs a new bed moving into it?