Stripping

Ever started something and then thought, puck – wish I hadn’t done that?
I’m having that feeling all over the place since I started stripping off the wallpaper. It had to come off – all thick vinyl which was one clear reason for, oh, at least half of the damp problem.
‘I’d leave the lining paper on though,’ opined the builder. ‘It’s probably holding up the walls.’ Ho, ho, ho. What an amusing cove.
Trouble is, said lining paper was a bit tatty and snaggly and torn in places. Surely it would be far easier just to take off the lot?
I asked on Purplecoo about stripping machines.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Edward. Then added, ‘Wouldn’t take off the lining paper anyway. It’s probably….’
Holding up the walls. Yeah, right. Heard that one before.

It was a slack day. My deadlines were suitably far off and I had absolutely no inclination to do anything like as energetic as trying to rewrite the novel (for the nth time). So I thought I’d try just a corner. Dampened it down. Wandered off and lay on the bed, reading Bleeding Heart Square, waiting for the obligatory twenty minutes it’s supposed to soak. Gave up after five and went and dug at it with a scraper. Hurrah – a huge bit satisfying bit came flying off. It was lovely – I’d forgotten how much I love picking and peeling. One of my great sadnesses is that I no longer dare get sunburned – the sheer joy of peeling off bits of curly skin. I try to do it to Adrian (who stupidly still gets burned occasionally) but the misery-guts gets all antsy about it and pushes me off, saying I’m a skin vampire.
Anyhow, before I knew it, about six feet of lining paper was off the wall and in the bin liner. Then I hit problems. A lovely large bit swung off the wall and, yup, took several layers of plaster with it.

I knew the house was in a rotten state but I didn’t realise it was actually, well, rotten. I didn’t realise walls could move, sway, undulate, wobble. It’s like having Quatermass or the contents of his pit living behind your wallpaper.
Adrian was horrified. ‘Stop it,’ he said as I sliced into a juicy bit above James’ bed and showered the poor boy (who was in it at the time) in a snowstorm of 1970s plaster. But I can’t. I’m obsessed. I’ve done the bathroom, rampaged through the guest room, got halfway through the loo before getting bored and leaving it as it is really really tough (and I’ve done the bits you can reach while sitting on the pan). I’ve nearly done the upstairs corridor and am going great guns in James’ room.
James looked a bit worried. ‘I don’t think you should be doing that, Mum.’
‘It’s going to look bloody awful,’ said Adrian, holding up one finger to forestall my next sentence. ‘And don’t even THINK about saying that once the electrician has been we can decorate it.’
Ah. He knows me too well. ‘Once the electrician’s been’ has been my constant refrain for the last three or four months. Said electrician has gone AWOL following a holiday in Thailand (yes, the recession is obviously an unknown concept for electricians) and hasn’t replied to our increasingly desperate messages. There are rumours of nervous breakdowns, of marital disharmony but one can’t help but take it personally. Safe to say, the electrician isn’t coming any time soon and so we’re going to have to live with the results of my stripping mania. I had an idea.
‘People would spend a fortune getting a finish like that,’ I said, with a sweeping arm gesture at the mottled pink, white, grey and mould coloured wall I’d just liberated from its grey and brown floral paper. They looked unconvinced.
‘People where, Mum?’ asked James.
‘Er, people in….er, London….’ I said, and then picked up confidence. ‘An absolute fortune. In fact, you’re really lucky to have a wall like that. We shouldn’t paper it – it would be a crime. This wall could appear in World of Interiors…..’ Pause. ‘Well, maybe Living etc.’
‘But we don’t live in London and I want blue walls and James Bond strip lighting.’
Philistine.
I know I should stop. I should call a halt before the madness descends down the stairs and into the rest of the house. Before the whole house maybe gives up the ghost and quietly collapses into a heap of rubble. But it’s like some awful compulsion. Hell, I even find myself eyeing up the brand-new paper in the breakfast room.
The problem is that stripping walls (even when they have a propensity to come tumbling down while you’re doing it) is a mindless, delightfully physical task. There is a goal in sight and one can move towards it (either in niggly irritating little scrapes or broad sweeps of sogginess). When it’s done, it’s done. It’s hugely satisfying and curiously soothing – unlike the rest of my life. So, for the time being, I’ll carry on stripping, regardless of the carnage.

On resolving to reinvent myself - and soggy wallpaper

It’s tough to reinvent yourself when you’ve got flu. It’s also tough reinventing yourself when you live in the House of Doom. No, the builders still haven’t come. ‘Why are you surprised?’ says Verity. ‘They’re builders. Their job is not to come. Their job is to drive you to psychosis. Come to think of it, they’re probably getting paid a packet from the local psychotherapists.’ Maybe in Marylebone, but not down here matey. There was only one psychotherapist and we viewed her house. Why was she selling? ‘Not enough custom,’ she complained, ‘Down here, people either get drunk or top themselves if they get low.’ On Exmoor, if you go mad, you go mad alone.

The house isn’t helping. A drawer in the kitchen gave up the will to live and collapsed and then three others decided, lemming-like, to copy it. The cabinet doors thought this looked like a fun game and two dropped off. Copycats. Mysterious holes keep appearing in the walls. Strange stains erupt on the carpet (and not even sure it’s Asbo Jack this time). Huge drafts are blowing through the windows and up through the floors and in through the ill-fitting doors. The fluorescent light in the utility room has started flickering in best horror movie style.
The dehumidifier has been chugging away in an exhausted fashion and we have been frantically emptying it. How much water can one house generate? An entire reservoir, by the looks of it. So much, in fact, that as I was coming up the stairs from the front door I put my hand on the wall and my fingers sank into several inches of soggy wallpaper. I’m one of life’s natural pickers (scabs, peeling sunburnt skin, candlewax, I’m not fussy – if it’s loose, I’ll pick it) and so my fingers naturally tugged and two yards of molten wallpaper collapsed onto my head. Adrian was outside, talking to someone about beer (naturally) and, in the time it took him to debate the merits of Pale Ale over Porter, I had excavated almost the entire lower hallway. I also gained an insight into life in 1963 – as under three layers of thick wallpaper the walls had been lined in the Daily Express.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Adrian, choking on a miasma of dust and mould spores. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Look at this,’ I said, trying to distract him. ‘There was a time when the Express didn’t talk about Princess Diana.’
He didn’t fall for it. ‘That wall’s going to collapse now. The wallpaper was the only thing holding it together.’
He had a point. We all walk Very Carefully up the stairs now as the slightest heavy clump of a boot sends another pile of dust and plaster cascading down.
Anyhow, getting off-point now. I have realised that, if we ever want to get this house sorted, it’s going to cost a darn sight more than our meagre savings. I am going to have to work MUCH more. Walker and my agent have vanished into the ether together and aren’t responding to emails. I bought two lottery tickets – on the basis that once in a while you have to give Fate a chance - but have somehow managed to lose both and am now convinced of course, that they were the ones that would have made our fortune. So I have to get back to work properly and Earn Money.

This, of course, would be easier had James not purloined my computer during the holidays. My desk is now piled high with notebooks covered in code, test-tube aliens blinking viciously and sweet wrappers. When I turn on my PC I find I the Northern Lights gleaming biliously at me. Every key makes zoo noises and my cursor is blinking yellow. A rash of weird icons litter my desktop and if I gaze out into space for more than ten seconds multi-coloured bubbles bounce mournfully over my screen. Nothing is sacred.
I write a feature on ‘creating a sanctuary in your home’ and laugh hollowly at myself telling people to ‘find a space that can be entirely your own.’ I don’t even have a desk of my own anymore. Hot-desking in your own home? It’s ridiculous.

Summoning the energy to do anything is virtually impossible. I can’t even be bothered to bitch about semi-famous people anymore. Who cares if newspaper columnists lie in print? That’s what all journalists do, right? Maybe that’s why I’m finding it so hard to get back into journalism – I’m sick of bending the truth, making things sound better or worse or wilder or madder than they really are. Maybe I need a new job altogether. Perhaps I could fill the natural void and become the Only Psychotherapist in the Village…. Then again, maybe not.
For the moment, my solution is to lie low, wrap up in a large blanket and sip sloe gin while watching episodes of Ugly Betty back-to-back and thanking my lucky stars I don’t work at a fashion magazine. Reinvention can wait until spring.