During my 15 years of renting in London, the only constant (apart from clinical depression) was an Iggy Pop gig poster.
Gifted to me by a friend, it was incredibly lurid, nuclear green and shocking pink, and featured Iggy sprawled on the front of a stage at the height of his punk beauty.
That poster kept me company in a succession of house-shares around Hackney then Camden, bringing a bit of colour to rooms that you may call, ‘hygienically challenged’.
In a funny way, which I wasn’t conscious of at the time, the poster was a bit of comfort during those years; putting it up again on a new wall meant I was doing at least one thing to personalise my living quarters at a time that was marked by unnerving impermanence.
Which is one reason why we loved Katherine Ormerod’s new book about interior design for renters, called Your Not Forever Home.
It is a welcome way for London’s under-pressure renters to lend a bit of love to their properties and make them feel a little more like home.
No grotty music posters are involved sadly, but as Ormerod tells us in her interview, you can do a lot with not very much to improve your living space.
What I enjoy about her approach is the determination not to let the house win, so to speak. Rather than accepting a grim bathroom in the face of landlord apathy, you can come up with clever ways to transform it, reversibly at that.
Creativity to solve crises: it’s the London way.
