In a desperate bid to try to knock some jobs on the head before starting work next week, I’ve spent today on the top of a ladder with a weapon in my hand that could certainly have caused me a lot of damage and with bad luck might even have killed me but so far so good in as much as I didn’t fall, run this gadget anywhere near my skin, face or other body parts or otherwise damage myself. I was preparing my wall for my mural (or in the words of the inimitable Hilda Ogden, my Muriel).

It was a frustrating couple of hours where I knew the job I was doing wasn’t going to cut the mustard because I could see the paint flaking again as soon as I moved on BUT as DM said (while leaning out of an upstairs window to look at my work and have this conversation), you can only do your best.

After I’d “finished” my poor quality job I decided to pressure wash the wall so that the loose, flaky stuff could be washed off before painting and as I was washing, another whole layer of paint was being stripped away with the jet. All it left was a layer of bitumen paint that someone had obviously put there in a desperate bid to eliminate damp. I got about a quarter of the way through this task and found myself grinding to a halt. It was too physical and too scary to do any more today so the gloves, safety specs and drill were downed and I headed for the shower to remove the layer of grime. Boy was I grimy. I had a layer of dust from the flailing “grinding” disk, a layer of paint that came flying off under pressure and of course I was soaked to the knickers with spray from the pressure washer.

I do hope that DM appreciates the fact that I was at the top of a ladder doing this and not him…