Noelle McCarthy: A 30-something's home decor dilemma

Dear Noelle,

I have a problem. I'm a young (ish!) single girl, living in Auckland. Join the club, I know.

The problem is my bedroom. I've just moved house and redecorated, and I think I may have gone overboard. It's flowery, it's flouncy, it's full of soppy, girly pictures and my prized collection of china cats.

Sitting here now, writing this to you, I realise I have the boudoir of a 12-year-old girl! I'm afraid that should I ever be lucky enough to get a bloke in here, he'll take one look at this stuff and run away screaming.

It's my stuff and I like it, but it's pretty OTT. Am I crippling my romantic chances by indulging my inner child?

Yours sincerely,

Girly girl.

Dear Girly,

I nearly laughed myself off the chair reading this. I'm trying to imagine it, and all I can come up with is a cross between the garrett in A Little Princess and that crazy pink dorm room she's got in Legally Blonde. Is it like that? Please say it is.

Seriously, though, I think your interior design dilemma is a valid problem and one we can all relate to, apart from the china cats. Spending the night with a man is a nerve-wracking thing.

Having him around to yours is even worse. The initial stages of the tryst are easy enough usually - a few bottles of pinot noir lend themselves to a circumstance of mutual understanding and before you know it, you're sending your-place-or-mine texts from the back of a Discount taxi on Ponsonby Rd.

You have two choices at this point. You can go for his, and take your chances with questionable bed linen and his naff taste in music (why do men think that Jeff Buckley is so conducive to good loving, can anyone tell me? Why?)

Not to mention running the gauntlet of his mocking flatmates the next morning. Or angry ones, depending on what you two got up to the night before.

Or you could bite the bullet and take him back to yours. This, granted, gives you more control over the whole scene but it also allows him a look at how you live, and in a worst-case scenario, the knowledge of where you live, neither of which may turn out to be desirable things the morning after the night before.

So Girly, you've got a choice. Simple answer to this is never take a date home.

Always go back to theirs.That way you can indulge your adult desires and keep your pre-teen boudoir as inviolate as you used to be.

That's the simple answer. I'm not really interested in the simple answer, though, and I don't think you are either. You know you can just overnight at the boys' houses, but still you're writing to me.

You're telling me about your flounces and your flowers and your china cats, and I wonder why. You don't say how old you are, so I have to guess. I say young-ish and I'm 30, so maybe you are around the same. China cats at 30.

That's the issue, isn't it? It's a scary prospect. Nothing says spinster-in-training like a squat little china cat.

You've moved house and set up a new abode which, quite frankly, sounds delightful, if you like that sort of thing, but you can't enjoy the flowers and the flounces and the knick-knacks and the pictures, because you're too busy worrying that you're going to die alone.

Here's the thing, Girly - we're all worried that we're going to die alone. All of us single ladies without the ring on it, we do wonder sometimes if we'll ever, ever find that someone, or if we're doomed to be by ourselves until the Final Trump.

No matter how sleek and modern our bedrooms are, even if we fill them full of big fluffy pillows and jasmine sprigs by the bed. It's just a fact of life.

Me and my friends all feel like that from time to time, and my friends are bona fide gorgeous. Seriously, they are. It's a universal anxiety, made even keener, sadly, by the passing of time.

But you can't obsess over it, you just can't. You've decorated your bedroom in a certain way, and it expresses who you are. You need to enjoy that, and bugger what anyone else thinks.

It's your bedroom and you choose who comes into it. Pick a cat man if you can, definitely pick a nice man.

By this stage in our lives, we've all seen a fair bit of the world, hopefully. I pity the chap who isn't equal to a few bits of decorative porcelain at the age of 30.

Choose wisely when it comes to the person sharing your boudoir, even in the most transitory sense. And if all else fails, invest in a few Diptyque candles and a fancy lamp. There's nothing a bit of mood lighting won't fix.

Not one of those ones you clap to turn off, though. We have to draw the line somewhere.

Otherwise, good luck!

All the best,

Noelle.

Email your problem to noellevivien@gmail.com