When Mark went off to work this morning, I trotted painfully up the fell for my daily guilt-banishing jog, after which I was free to get on with less excruciating activities.
Obviously there were all sorts of small things requiring attention. If you are going to have your bed in your living room then you need to make more of an effort not to leave underwear on the floor for reasons of decency. We do not leave underwear on the floor anyway, because if we do then Roger Poopy steals it, but there are similar things requiring attention. One would not wish the casual visitor to become uncomfortably acquainted with one’s more revolting personal habits. Toenail clippings and used tissues are examples of the sort of things which should never, ever be revealed to the general public.
We are not expecting visitors, but I tidied up anyway, because there is always the postman or the man from Autoparts.
Once I had made the house as respectable as a house ever is when the bed is in the living room even though its inhabitants are not John Lennon and Yoko Ono, I could turn my attention to the bedroom restoration project.
I found the end of a tub of Brilliant White B&Q Special Offer paint under the stairs. It was a massive tub, with about half an inch of paint left in the bottom. I was rather pleased to have the opportunity to use it, because it has been occupying a disproportionately large quantity of the available storage space and has been there for four years. I know this, because I have had to move it out of the way in order to get at the Christmas decorations on four separate occasions.
I mixed it with some PVA, partly to pad it out a bit, and partly to seal the walls against dust creeping through any cracks in the plaster. This happens. You can see cracks really easily when they are surrounded by huge black dust stains.
Then I painted the bedroom.
I had not realised that this would turn out to be quite as messy as it was. Things were not helped when I filled the roller tray and then accidentally dropped the paint tub into it. This made a tiresome mess and made it difficult to put the tub down anywhere. In the end I found an empty cardboard box and balanced the tub on top of that.
I used every last drop of the paint, and put the tub in the dustbin with some satisfaction. I was too idle to wash the paint roller, so I put that in there as well. By this time I was so covered in paint that I had to have a shower. Also I had to put my clothes straight in the washing machine, in the hope that the paint would come off if I was quick. This turned out to be almost correct.
I was not painting it brilliant white because I want a white bedroom. The point of this was to obliterate the existing colour, which had started life as sage green, and had become a sort of mud-coloured camouflage pattern.
Once I had done it I was fed up of painting.
I forged Number Two Daughter’s signature on her taxi licence application, as requested, and then took it to the council. She will be home in a fortnight and wishes to earn a living in the time-honoured family tradition of minimal labour.
After that I went to B&Q.
I bought half a dozen disposable paint rollers and trays. Life is too short for washing paint rollers and then cleaning the sink.
Mark arrived home at the same time as I did, and we went to apply my carefully designed Painting Master Plan to the walls of the bedroom. I have put a great deal of thought into choosing the colours and considering what I want to do with them.
The picture is above.
I think it is absolutely beautiful.
I do not know if Mark likes it. When I asked he said that he wondered if I had been inspired by a Liquorice Allsort.
Apart from that he just keeps laughing.
