'Tottering-by-gently'
'If you're hoping for a hot bath, you'll have to catch the boiler unawares at about four o' clock in the morning. . .'
'I know I said I was only going to look but it's a woman's perogative to change her mind, darling. . .'
Enjoying one's husband's hobbies.
'You look fine as you are - now come down - we're leaving. . .'
Annie Tempest's father inherited Broughton Hall, an Elizabethan pile in West Yorkshire, when she was 12. The estate was ‘hugely in debt’ when her eccentric uncle died intestate. ‘My father was in a stress-induced depression. The house had hip baths in the corridors catching leaks; there was snow on the billiard table; we had to put antifreeze down the loos.’Even today, she says, ‘It is totally Tottering Hall,’ the crumbling estate at the heart of her Tottering-by-Gently cartoon strip in Country Life magazine.
Annie brings an amused and affectionate eye to the denizens of Tottering Hall, Dicky and Daffy and their daughter and grandchildren. The O'Shea Gallery sells her prints.