RIP Roman Blinds

It’s a year ago today that I finally admitted to myself that the seven Roman blinds in my kitchen were faded. Horribly. Embarrassingly horribly. So embarrassingly horribly that when friends popped in for a cup of tea I was prevailed upon to casually remark, “Do you think my blinds have faded?” To which they would invariably answer: “But you bought the fabric and had them made up in that posh shop where you need a blow dry and a spray tan before entering…”
So I shovelled on my make-up and unstrung a blind and took it back to the shop, with a wee bit of extra fabric, the size of an ostentatious napkin, which had not been made into a blind and had not faded.
I was frank and honest. I was even apologetic. I said, “I know you will be as shocked as me that your fabric has faded so horribly. Look at the discrepancy between this unfaded piece fabric and the fabric of my blind...”
They weren’t particularly anything in the shop. Not rude, not helpful, not anything. The owner was on holiday. Leave it with them, they said.
So I left it with them, and left it with them and after a month I phoned. There were shouted instructions from the background, I couldn’t fail but hear them. The owner was back from holiday and she was shouting: “I don’t want to talk to that woman about her Roman blinds...”
And that’s how it’s been for a year. The owner refuses to talk about the fading of my Roman blinds. In desperation I have sought professional legal advice but the owner replies to the solicitor’s letters with frivolous, joking suggestions: “We have beautiful fabrics in this shop. If your client doesn’t like the fabric she originally chose for the blinds perhaps she’d like to come in and chose another fabric?”
Tonight Nick attempted to file a claim, on line, in the small claims court, but before he could fully explain in 2000 words the history of the faded blinds, ‘time up’ occurred and he was automatically logged off and all his form filling lost.
The rest of the windows in our farmhouse are hung with cheap and cheerful curtains, bought at car boot sales and in Next Clearance shops. None of these curtains have faded. And the moral of the story is...