Richard Hearn paints for Tottenham

For those that describe my column as the literary equivalent of watching paint dry, good news! Having started decluttering, we have now moved onto painting three rooms, and I’m going to use this column to tell all.

My wife did the bathroom. She took this one upon herself having got fed up with my ‘cutting in.’ No, this isn’t my driving, conversational interruptions, or even golf – I don’t play golf – but my accuracy on where wall meets ceiling. She’s got a point, but in my defence, most of my recent painting has been in that squeezed time between the kids and us going to bed, featuring low light and tiredness. No wonder the line isn’t straight.

So she did the bathroom. I took the kids to Hove Park while she was nearing the end of the first coat. While they went on slides and in the sandpit, I calculated that it would be about three and a half hours before we could possibly do a second coat. I returned home to find she was actually finishing what she called ‘a second coat’. I plucked up the courage and suggested that it was in fact a thick first coat, and that you can’t take the Forth Bridge approach to our bathroom and assume that you can paint continuously. Still I had to agree, while I held an ice pack to my forehead to lessen the bruising, that she had actually done a good job.

“…the music is now embedded in the walls, trapped between the first and second coats”

Paint-fumed into action, I tackled the study, what had been the nursery. (This was going from yellow to Ivory Cream, fact fans). The main obstacle was the computer plugged in for me to listen to 90’s themed CDs: Suede, Radiohead, Crash Test Dummies (whatever happened to them? Probably somewhere painting a room Ivory Cream) and even Robbie Williams. Moving the desk around for me to get round the room was like having a 90’s DJ as a kind of ‘getting-in-the-way’ assistant. Still, the music is now embedded in the walls, trapped between the first and second coats.
Next up the kitchen, soundtracked by Tottenham playing in Europe. Moments in the game chart my progress. There was the early optimism when Tottenham scored a goal just as I complete a rewarding section around the light switch, the opposition equalising just as I stand back and admire my handiwork. Later, during that difficult bit above the fridge where I had to balance on the worktop, someone got sent off. In trying to work out who it was, maybe some of the pipework got missed. I don’t know.

The game went to penalties. Tottenham lost. And a nagging feeling set in, that the kitchen wasn’t quite the right colour.

Illustration: Paul Lewis www.pointlessrhino.com