MELLIPOP PLAYS INTERIOR DESIGN

Ok, so you know you're getting old when each and every visit you make to the residence of some old friend or new acquaintance is spent enviously scrutinising their interior design aesthetic. And to be secretly shamed by the very fact of your bare walls and hand-me down furniture back home, befitting the status of a nomadic, impoverished university student, but not befitting your status as mature suburban domesticate (note that I did not use the word "sophisticate")

No photos, no artwork, a couple of ailing indoor plants and dog-chewed furniture. The hilarious irony is that I have actually written two feature articles on interior decor for a glossy lifestyle magazine.

So I'm making amends here and now in the final few months of my twenties. And I am refusing to let the crucial fact that I know nothing about art, style or good taste stop me.

I'm very excited about my latest project. As mentioned, I know nothing about art but I do know that generic Van Gogh prints are not my thing.

My thing, it turns out rather nicely, is tour posters. So I'm scouring the 'net for worthy candidates and having them blockmounted. I have made three fabulous acquisitions already, with a further five already on the way.

My Wilco poster is now officially my favourite material possession. It's freakin massive (about 1 m x 1.5 m) and seriously sexy. I've also got a Bob Dylan poster from a French show he did with Van Morrison and another of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals when they played in Australia. Though I hate having to explain that RYAN Adams (sexy alt.country artiste) is NOT BRYAN Adams (bland MOR rocker). I tried without success to convey this very point to the lady at the art store, who still listed the poster as Bryan Adams on the job sheet when I went to have it blockmounted. It was shades of the Meatloaf t-shirt all over again and I was left feeling like a sad suburban bogan with hideous taste in music.

So anyway, those who know me know that I don't do things by half. I've already shelled out for a further five posters from tours by The Flaming Lips, The Shins, Sonic Youth, You Am I and Belle and Sebastian.

So my interior design aesthetic has finally been defined. At least now I can answer the very naff question I posed at the opening of one of the aforementioned interior decor articles I wrote.

To quote myself: "What does your home say about you? Is it fab or drab?"

Well dahhhling, my home veritably screams "indie rock cliche". And I like it like that.