My daughter, in turn, excavated the suitcase of ancient comics in the bedroom, and in my old Just Seventeens, and the Mizzes, which were first read by my sister, she could learn about bikinis and picnic food and how to stay cool on the beach (and how to find a summer boyfriend – they always made it sound so easy).
That fractional increase may soon mean more childhood bedrooms, with ancient teddies and decrepit posters, are vacated by millenials with new employment elsewhere.
Our Newfound Lake cottage, with its mismatched furniture, stacks of old National Geographics in the bedroom and an ancient Scrabble game with tiles missing, filled the bill perfectly.
Reference books in the dining room, older books needing and deserving protection in bookcases in the living room, theology and philosophy on shelves in the bedroom, classical and ancient Near Eastern literature in the study, modern history and Americana in the room that has only bookshelves in it, unclassifiable books in stacks on the stairs.
But the legend speaks to the mystery of Doris Duke, "the richest girl in the world," who, if the newspapers of her day were to be believed, ate her baby porridge from a 14-carat-gold cup, bathed in colored water spouting from an ancient Italian fountain in her bedroom and wore bathrobes made from the wool of a rare species of dwarf camel.
(After making love, a handsome puppet, stylized from figures on ancient Etruscan jars, leaves the bedroom to make a long voyage while his innamorata traces the outline of his shadow on a wall. A narrator intones that this is how art began).
One day, when I was only four, my father marched me through a maze of alleys behind a bazaar and brought me to the stale, hazy bedroom of an ancient curandera, who cupped my face in her palm and exclaimed that I had "the gift".
Your hosts are happy, civilised people whose farm - an ancient and rambling bastide - has bedrooms of almost monastic simplicity in the old tower.
Summer's Leases has just added Contrada La Lupa in Siena, a three-bedroom apartment in an ancient tower with shiny wooden floors, beamed ceilings and a roof terrace.
