I took the TV out of the living room and arranged this table so that the kids could sit round it and eat or draw yesterday. I really love this arrangement, but even though we’ve given up daily junk TV, we still use the thing, and I don’ t know where to put it. For now, I tried sticking it on the table against the wall, covered with a patchwork cloth to protect it from knocks. It isn’t quite the same. I wonder, if someone did a study of people’s living rooms, how many would be basically arranged as TV-watching theatres? How many have separate TV-watching rooms? And how many have a TV in every room?

When my parents were young, people lived in the kitchen, the living room was known as the parlour, and you only used it when guests came round. I like domestic architecture and have visited old houses belonging to everyday people in much of France and the UK. It’s not rare for the home to consist of two almost identical rooms: one used for sleeping, eating and living on an everyday basis, the other for guests, births and deaths.

Ours is very much a working house, rather than a place where we come to rest and take care of our needs, but its a modern kind of work. There are places to read, write, draw and use computers scattered around everywhere.