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I’ve just realised that my two signature wallpaper designs feature sibling relationships.

I shouldn’t be surprised because I made the first wallpaper for my twin sons and I was brought up with one sister but there you are. 

Hadn’t properly noticed until I was looking for a present for my sister’s birthday this week and vaguely wondering if I could get away with a couple of rolls of General Miss Chief (I really can’t).

I’ve always said I love Roald Dahl, and I do.  But I think I might love his illustrator Quentin Blake even more. 

His wonderful wallpaper collection from Osbourne and Little is called Zagazoo and I love his quirky Cockatoos, particularly.  

Blake’s famous for drawing with quill pens and scratchy nibs so his drawings are as full of ‘mistakes’ and surprise as the messy situations his characters find themselves in. 

One of the reasons I started designing for kids was because I wanted to get away from the leery, branded Man Utd type prints so often printed in unappealing, shouty red-and-white. 

So why do I so love PaperBoy’s Spitfire pattern in…red and white?! 

I surprise myself with my love of this fabric but for me it’s all about the quality of the colours and the material.

No stylish person wants to be the same as everyone else.

But sometimes things are popular for good reason – Cartier diamonds, Mercedes-Benz convertibles, Cadbury’s Crème Eggs – and no matter how many people have them, it’s still ok to want them.

I love velvet. 

I always wanted a Weimaraner dog mainly because they look and feel like the most luxurious silver-grey hammered velvet.

I only gave up on my dream of having one when I realized they need 6 hours of running about a day, and chase deer and – long story short - I settled for a pup that looks more like the slut-wool that gathers under the kitchen cabinets but is happy just to trot round the block now and again.

Or is it? 

Here at PaperBoy Wallpaper we’re keen, as you know, on making the world a more beautiful place, one home at a time. 

Most of us don’t have unlimited amounts of cash to do that with, and it’s a good thing: beauty is certainly not just a money-dependent thing. 

But sometimes, oh, wouldn’t it be very heaven to be able to spend a king’s ransom on perfection?  To have the most beautifully made, original, luxurious decorations and geegaws?  Hand-painted Chinoiserie on the walls (maybe £600-£1,000 a panel – hand painted wallpaper doesn’t come in rolls!). 

I want fabrics in my house to have heft, texture, softness and sway.

I want the colours and patterns to soothe and delight. 

I want them to make my home feel like a home: comfortable, elegant, harmonious and a little bit luxurious.

This was my earliest experience of what I think was the best children’s wallpaper.

I gurgled at it in my cot in the early 70s and it still makes me happy.

I have a friend who can look at your bookshelves and tell you your life.  It’s uncanny. She reads them like fortune tellers read your palms. She once averted a friend’s divorce just by noticing a copy of Anais Nin’s 'Henry and June' on her coffee table.

She claims you can ‘read’ people (pardon the pun) through anything if you pay the right sort of attention: their clothes their pets, and – this is where I got really interested – their houses.