The need for privacy & curtains

There is much disgruntlement in the Pub yesterday. It covered a range of niggles including this one.

"It's like sitting in a goldfish bowl," moans Mr P. Some time ago the curtains were taken down in the bar. Some new material appeared across the top of the windows but that's it. We've waited ever since for the matching curtains to arrive. Indeed we were promised them for the new year, but clearly 2009 isn't the new year meant. There's certainly no sign of them.

I have to confess I've long thought looking at the bare windows is cold & unwelcoming, not characteristics you want to encourage in a bar. Lack of curtains is fine in an office or gym, for example, but not somewhere you want to relax. It's one of the things that irritates us a bit in France. They tend to use shutters & so often don't bother with curtains. But curtains soften the look of the room to my mind, making them more relaxing.

The only rooms I'm prepared to consider not putting curtains in when it comes to our own home are the kitchen & bathroom, the latter because of the damp & the smallness of the window, the former because of the difficulty of keeping them clean in the greasy atmosphere. We may have blinds in the other rooms but they are in addition to the curtains, not instead of, to block out strong, low, blinding sunlight & to stop people looking in. We like our privacy & the front of the house is near the pavement.

I'd never really thought of it before but I can see Mr P's point. We don't live in the village the Pub is in so the only people who know us are fellow Pub goers, but for Mr P it's a different matter. Not only does he live in the village so is locally well-known, he's also a teacher. As people pass, on these dark nights when inevitably the lit bar is easy to see, indeed is eye attracting, everyone can see how often & when he is in the Pub. This includes his students & their parents.

Now, there's nothing wrong with Mr P being in a Pub. Indeed he needs somewhere to unwind from the stresses of teaching before taking on the stresses of his home life, with a wife who has had ME for many years & a mother who had a stroke a year ago & is now hardly able to recognise him, let alone acknowledge him, when he visits her. He's always good company & rarely drinks to excess. But you never know what others looking on may think. Some people can get very moralistic about such behaviour. I can't blame him for not wanting to be lit up in this way. I suspect he's not the only one with such feelings. The numbers at the bar seem to have reduced drastically in these winter months. As a result he can't even hide in the crowd.

And all this for the sake of some curtains!