The Tale of Freddy the Console Table
…and how you too can make a new friend from old crap and a cheap IKEA table.
If you want to skip straight to how I made Freddy, then that’s near the bottom of this rather lovely little story. I’m not offended, we’re all busy. Although, I hope you might be intrigued as to why a table gets a name. I always said I would write about interiors and gardens, but melded with stories from my life. This is one of those with a ‘How to’ at the end.
Some years ago, on a dismally wet February morning, the kind where you’d rather pull the bedcovers over your head and pretend the world isn’t turning, I was invited around to my friend Amanda’s house for coffee. Amanda is a rare creature. She has a face that is positively luminescent with features that are wide and hypnotically inviting. Even when she’s in a scathing mood, there’s a little dimple of happiness in the corners of her downturned smile. She radiates hope and it’s contagious. I love to be around her and wish I was much more often than I am.
On this particular morning I was on a quest for validation and assurance and Amanda was exactly the right person with the right energy. I’d come up with a new name for my blog, which had only been going a year, but I was receiving a little of the wrong kind of attention, shall we say, because of its title: mygaybestfriend.com.
It was pretty much what I do now, chatting about interiors and gardens, my latest read, or holiday experience, etc. But some complete strangers on the internet were getting the wrong idea as to what type of website it was and presumed it was the forerunner to OnlyFans!
I used to be a Vidal Sassoon hairdresser by day. A client once said to me: “You know, I love coming here. I get my hair done, I get interior and garden advice, book, play and restaurant recommendations, help with my man problems and a whole lot of laughs. It’s like having my very own gay best friend.” – and that’s where my little acorn of an idea for my blog originally came from. I had no idea it would be misconstrued by a rather saucy gay male population out in the ether. So, it needed to change!
Amanda lived in the prettiest of cottages in the middle of a dell in a picture postcard village in the Surrey Hills, England. You could pick up her home and place it quite perfectly in an E.M. Forster novel, inhabited by The Miss Alans. Lucy and Freddy Honeychurch would, naturally, have lived on the opposite side of the hillside in Summer Street with their parents.
Interestingly, Forster actually lived for a time in nearby Abinger Hammer where our home was. Apparently, the skinny-dipping scene in Room with a View was based on a small group of ponds in The Hurtwood, near Holmbury St. Mary, on which Summer Street was based. The ponds can still be seen to this day.
Amanda is an artist, but not of the usual kind. She creates three dimensional embroidered wonders of nature, which when finished, cannot be distinguished between the real thing. We have a few of her pieces, the fungi being my absolute favourite.
On this particular morning, she was studiously intent on completely a collection of these mysterious silk-laden mushrooms when I knocked on her door. Visibly stressed, she still managed one of her effervescent smiles and ushered me in.
“Oh Lordy! Should I call back another time?” I asked.
“No, no, I said you could come round and I meant it. The workload is never ending, so it can wait a while.” She replied kindly, making her way to her studio. It was filled to the rafters with a thousand perfectly placed multicoloured bobbins, which always reminded me of the shelves of coloured sweaters I used to fold when I worked at Benetton during the summer holidays.
I noticed something new in the far corner: a console table. The top was made from an antique printing drawer. I was immediately in love.
“That is beautiful. Where did you get it?” I enquired.
“Matthew made it for me. It’s a printing drawer and he made the legs. It’s for displaying some of my work for a craft show I’m doing. Whaddayouthink?”
“I think it’s ingenious and I need one in my life immediately! What a clever chap!” I replied.
She smiled and told me he has his uses. We laughed.
After an extremely helpful hour or so of imagination and witty banter, I left my friend and her pretty little cottage with renewed vigour and my new blog name: JP’s Life and Loves, which is now, of course, HOME & HORT. I also had a burning desire to make myself a console table.
We had a huge, oversized stormy blue-grey velvet sofa in our snug. It looked like a storm cloud when plumped within an inch of its feathery life, but when sat on it quickly turned to poured concrete. I hated it, mainly because it took a very physical workout to inflate back to anything resembling a cloud. I’ve never had a feather-filled sofa since. It sat in front of a roomy bay window and was pleading for a console table and lamps to occupy the space. I just knew Amanda had given me the answer.
How Freddy got his name
I have always had a penchant for anthropomorphism. There’s something hearty and endearing about giving inanimate objects a personality. Creating a backstory for a lop-sided Christmas tree, or rather forlorn looking watering can is one of my favourite pastimes. My barely-ridden bicycle is named Benjamin. Poor Benjamin. I had a rather fanciable decorative tree branch named Luca - he was such a charmer and who remembers the diva that was ‘Balcony’ in our New England inspired home? She was deliciously rude at all times. If you do, then thank you for being with me for so long!
It’s no surprise then that I wanted to name my console table. It was definitely a he, a rather cheeky and playful he. “Yes, I’m a console table, but I’m much more fun than that. You can put little trinkets you’ve collected in my compartments. I’m a card, a catch and a dab hand at tennis!” The energetic Freddy from Room with a View immediately came to mind, particularly after my morning with Amanda in the hills.
Unfortunately, no one really noticed Freddy in our weatherboard home, mainly because he was hidden behind that exasperating sofa. Freddy travelled with us to the coast in 2020. Yet, somehow he seemed to disappear in the grandeur of Victoriana. But, at last, in our barn, he seems to have come into his own. We had a chat about it all and afterwards I decided to place him centre stage. It was only right. He’s behind a sofa again, but the sofa floats, so in reality he’s in front of it for all to see when they enter the room. He’s loving it. I swear the other day I heard him giggle!
Amanda Cobbett’s website:
https://www.amandacobbett.com/
How I made Freddy
I set about finding a pre-made base for the legs, as I wouldn’t be able to replicate Matthew’s prowess at welding. After much surfing on the tinterweb I found a simple inexpensive IKEA black-framed table with a glass top. You can still buy it now and it’s only £45.
Next I needed two old printing drawers. Mr C, my partner in crime, and I took a day trip to the veritable treasure trove that is Ardingly Antiques Fair. The two imperative components that would turn a humble table into Freddy the Console Table were found. We glued them together at one end and then took measurements for a sheet of toughened glass to be cut to sit pleasingly on top. We decided not to affix the printing drawers or the glass to Freddy as it made him much easier for moving around, which we did a lot after 2020. I have never gotten around to filling Freddy with little trinkets, shells and keepsakes, a bit like I did with the printing tray art I made (see photos), but perhaps this is his year?
Please, if you have a moment, a restack click, a heart ♥️ , or a comment really helps with visibility and gets HOME & HORT to new friends. Thank you. Xx
Super thrilled to bits you’re a paid member of our group. I’m eternally grateful and you are making my dreams come true. X
What a wonderful story JP! I have been here since the very beginning of your 'my gay best friend days' and remember all of those things! I hadn't known about the EM Forster-Surrey connection. How fascinating that parts of the film where made near your old home. I was obsessed with that film as a teenager, I think Merchant-Ivory films were definitely responsible for my love of EM Forster, and not my old English teacher 🤣....also perhaps my obsession with Rupert Graves, who was rather easy on the eye as Freddy! That table is brilliant, I love it. Happy Sunday to you & Mr C!
Love that console table! I have a ridiculously large collection of vintage lead figures and this would make a great way to show them off without losing any up the hoover (which is more commonly done than you might imagine.