COUCH POTATO (Not)

Calm down!  Calm down!  The scallies at the University of Liverpool have just published research spuriously claiming that it only takes a fortnight of couch surfing for you to be on the slippery slope to an early grave.  So I’m sitting here wondering if I can find a way to capitalise on this illuminating piece of media spin namely to get early retirement on the basis that my office job is now as bad for you as a holiday in Chernobyl.

Walk to work?  Of course I could, after all the office is only a mere 10 miles away from home.  I might have to leave a bit earlier in the morning (say 5 am) and spend about £9,000 on a future knee replacement operation but it would be a small sacrifice to make if I want to live to be a hundred.

Better still, I could persuade my boss to outsource my job to Mumbai where they seem less bothered about the population’s inactivity levels or put in a business case for automated treadmills to be fitted under each desk so that pen pushers like me could spend the day spinning about like a hyperactive hamster whilst sitting at the PC.

Shame on you Daniel Cuthbertson!  Nobody wants to go back to washing their sheets in a bathtub and wringing them through a mangle just to keep fit or satisfy the current trend for fat bashing.  I dare say there are those out there who could do with a bit of a rocket under their arses but if I found any potatoes on my couch there’d be all hell to pay as we have a ‘no eating in front of the telly’ policy here.

Perhaps your research grant would have been better spent examining the correlation between the inability to lose weight and all the antibiotics/steroids that are pumped into the meat we eat.  If the animals we consume are super-sized thanks to all the Franken-food they’re given then what hope is there for those that then tuck into these beasts? 

“Don’t just flop on the sofa at the weekend” advice printed in The Times on Good Friday.  Sofa?  If only I could but after two solid days of painting wallpaper, my joints are tighter than MI6’s recruitment policy and if I sat down, I’d probably need a forklift to help me back up again.  Now pass me a crème egg.  

Painting wallpaper

Extendable pole for those hard to reach places

Upstairs hallway done

Nutmeg white very subtle wall colour

One step closer to completion

ASSET LIQUIDATION

Asset liquidation, the posh middle class way of saying I’m selling my tat on Ebay.  I’m down-sizing my life by getting rid of all those dust gathering knick-knacks which for decades have cluttered up the house.  

Wrought iron wall clutter

Floor standing clutter

Why?  Not out of love but from the need to pay for a new hallway radiator whilst at the same time saving for a holiday in Italy and with this cold wintry Easter weather, Ebay beats freezing your butt off at a car boot sale. 

Looking at buying one of these radiators

Ebay or Gumtree are by far the easiest way of recycling everything you don’t want into everything you do want without having to resort to a costly home improvement loan from the bank.  (Credit isn’t free!)  Proceeds of sales to date have almost covered the cost of 1 new radiator but there’s still the plumber to factor in so I’ll be scouring the house for anything else not chained to the walls. 

Shelby’s hiding out in my wool bag in case she gets listed.

She'll never find me in here

MORE COVING

Please sir, can I have some more coving?  This time it’s the turn of daughter’s bedroom and the upstairs bathroom to be given the royal coving treatment as these rooms are next on the world’s greatest DIY list.  

It's not a cave, it's the daughter's bedroom

Upstairs bathroom - it's gotta go

I’ve picked a plasterer out of our local newspaper, the Bournemouth Echo, to do the honours as I haven’t the time to post a job on MyBuilder.com and I didn’t really like the visible joins left on the hallway coving by the last guy. 

Same principles apply though, always check the credentials (Checkatrade) of your chosen tradesperson and any reviews posted online about their workmanship as it’s hard to say ‘no’ once they’ve turned up to give you a quote.  Expect to pay something in the region of about £200 for a day’s coving work including materials. 

And now a word about wallpaper in respect of the above – remember to ask your tradesperson what experience they have had in hanging the type of wallpaper you have. 

Now the reason I say this has become more apparent since I started painting our wallpaper and noticed little things such as overlapping or open joins, ragged edges that didn’t look cut with scissors, unmatched patterns and strange ‘patching’ applied in places.  By patching I mean that a ‘patch’ of paper has been cut out and stuck in position at the end of a strip for no reason other than the person probably couldn’t be bothered to measure out a new length of paper.  Considering we had 9 rolls left over due to my over-estimating of quantities required, there really were no excuses for not using a fresh length of paper each time.  Needless to say, that company won’t be getting any further calls from me for wallpapering.  I won’t name and shame them here, but if you really want to know who they are then email me privately.

Now you see it, now you don't

Nutmeg white - first coat upstairs

It's a long hard slog painting patterned wallpaper

All in all, it’s a case of keep calm and carry on painting.  The paper’s up and there’s nothing I can do about it now is there?

Jasmine White - first coat on staircase spindles

Shelby is most bemused at having been woken from her wintry beauty sleep to be moved into my son’s old bedroom whilst we clear out the dusty boxes of hoarded clutter so that the plasterer can access the ceiling. 

Tortoise Travelodge

I need my beauty sleep

OSCAR WILDE'S FAN CLUB

“We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”.   I’ve taken a half day off work to revel in the theatrical delights of Lady Windermere’s Fan, being broadcast live as part of a celebration of Oscar Wilde’s plays of which I am a great admirer.  It feels so naughty, like bunking off school especially as we’re already a bit short staffed in the office due to the Easter holidays. 

Ah if only my uncultured colleagues had heard for themselves those delicious Wilde witticisms coined by arguably one of the best poets and playwrights of Victorian times then they too would be stampeding for the exit.  But raised on a diet of Love Island and TOWIE, I imagine Oscar Wilde is as familiar to them as the Housewives of Cheshire are to me. Who? Exactly!

"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken"