James Hannah

Well, what you’ve been ask­ing about all this time has finally come to pass: the Princess is ours.

On Thurs­day Jols and I headed off to White Stuff’s new Worces­ter branch, where we were met by the very accom­mo­dat­ing Georgie and co (up from Lon­don!), who were respon­si­ble for the whole ‘car­a­van’ promo. Georgie has, she told us with what you might clas­sify an edgy laugh, carted the Princess from fes­ti­val to fes­ti­val, from Corn­wall to the Isle of Wight, to Edin­burgh and every­where in between through­out the summer.

Life, she admit­ted, will be odd with­out the Princess. But Georgie’s made of strong stuff. After all, the White Stuff win­ter collection’s in, and she’s all about gar­den gnomes now. And it doesn’t stop there; appar­ently the cam­paign for sum­mer 2010 is well under devel­op­ment, but no amount of prod­ding and pout­ing from Jols and me could tease a hint out of her as to what it’s all about – or what com­pe­ti­tions they might be running.

What an odd job.

For all our don’t-know-what-to-do-with-a-caravan-ness, the White Stuff peo­ple have been very good to us; the Princess has been decked out inside and out by the woman who designs the stores, and so the wall­pa­pered exte­rior has been matched by a wall­pa­pered inte­rior, a wall­pa­pered pic­nic table, gilt-edged shelv­ing and chintzy lamp­shades. Cush­ions have been spe­cially made, a pic­nic ham­per pro­vided, but the pièce de résis­tance is an astro­turfed step.

Quite against their Ts and Cs they carted the car­a­van from Lon­don to Worces­ter, and decked us out in White Stuff clob­ber so we would look the part for a few photos.

I shall do my best over the next few days to pen you a note about how all of this went.

The result of all this odd­ness is: the Princess is ours, and she now resides in a Secret Loca­tion in Deep­est Shropshire.

Your pal

j