I have the painters in. I am cowering in a remote corner of the house thanking Providence they’ve arrived at least.
That’s the thing about employing tradesmen who plumb, wire, paint or fix – they’re invariably working on a big rush job, (the implication being, mine is a small non-urgent domestic one) and will get to me as soon as they can. This may be any time from three days to three weeks, but one must be prepared. Prepared to put one’s life on hold indefinitely (hair appointments excepted) and also to have all moveable items shifted so they can make an immediate start.
Cue panic clearance of kitchen and futility room, last decorated six years ago. It’s amazing what one accumulates in that time.
The disadvantage of making the kitchen a style statement is deconstructing the little touches one has added to give it character. Down with the pinboard of amusing cards and witty aphorisms, the wall full of family pictures; the decorative platters, ornamental teapots, jugs, plant-pots and knick-knacks; evacuate the table, the chairs and the telly. Lord, how forlorn and shabby it looks now…
The job’s a doddle compared to the futility room which has two walls of floor-to-ceiling open shelving crammed with glassware, crockery, cast-iron casseroles, storage containers, cake tins, cleaning products, brooms, buckets, every outmoded electrical gadget bought over a long marriage and a multiplicity of Things That Might Be Useful Sometime – all of which must be conveyed to an already crowded-to-capacity garage.
As I trudge back and forth, arms laden, I toy with the idea of discarding things – but I’d need a skip. What possessed me to keep quaintly-shaped bottles, ugly vases, a pressure cooker that blew its top; a trivet from our first microwave, my mother’s Christmas pudding steamer, two dead radios and a state-of-the-art fish-shaped corkscrew that inflicted grievous bodily harm on its users; two legs of an antique chair still in the roofspace and enough bubblewrap to keep Amazon in business for a calendar year?
Three phone-calls, five texts and a fortnight of sustaining life with only a kettle, a toaster and a microwave; standing up to eat my dinner off the draining-board while trying to remember where I put the dishwasher tablets or the dustpan and brush and my frustration evaporates in an ecstasy of welcome when the painters finally arrive.
The rooms are cleared, the paint colours chosen. We are ready to roll. “Dustsheets?” one enquires with lifted eyebrow. The dustsheets, neatly folded, are irretrievable behind a solid wall of Sunday Times Wine Club boxes containing thirty years’ worth of kitchenalia.
I have discovered through long and bitter experience that once you get hold of tradesmen, it’s a bad idea to let them escape. Cherish them. Nourish them. This will necessitate your almost permanent presence on the premises, a perpetually boiling kettle, elevenses, a little something for lunch, four o’clockses and an ashtray on the outside windowsill.
I pride myself on variety in this department and laid in supplies accordingly, recalling that one of them has a passion for hot cross buns – normally only available around Easter. I found them. I bought them. “I’ve gone off them,” he tells me two minutes after his arrival, adding about the other, “His stomach doesn’t like cucumber.” Thus far we’ve had floury baps, granary ditto, seeded rolls with ham, cheese, chicken or tuna, fruit scones, pancakes, yoghurt, ice-cream, carrot cake, chocolate biscuits and fresh fruit. It’s like catering for an endless picnic. (I am eating the hot cross buns toasted for breakfast. Four down, only a dozen to go.)
Everything in the decorating line is going swimmingly, except the grey on the shade card and the grey on the walls isn’t quite the same and a light-fitting fell in broken shards into a newly-opened two-litre can of paint. All I have to do now is wash the contents of the seventeen Sunday Times Wine Club boxes, replace everything and normality will be restored. After that, like Miss Havisham, I shall sit down forever and let the house fall into dereliction.
