"It was only a small house and when the February winds blew it rocked on its wooden stumps and it is a measure of their sense of their own specialness that they did not envy their neighbours' larger houses but found theirs in every way superior. To walk into that little cottage was to feel something that was available nowhere else in town: old oiled timbers, mellow lights, curious old rugs, and chipped plates with pretty patterns, which visitors would fondly imagine were remants of a misplaced fortune. Where everybody else bought glossy white paint and threw out their kitchen dresser, the Joys were seen removing the last vestiges of paint and fossicking out at the tip for their neighbours' rejected furniture."

Bliss, Peter Carey