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In the December
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I
am in the process of moving house and I am finding it very stressful, for no good reason. It should be easy. I am not having to sell or buy a house, so there is no stress of broken chains, gazumping or mortgages. It is not as if I am moving far; I can just about see the new house from the old one. But there is still so much to think about.
I have been keeping a list of all the organisations that need to be contacted, and it is now running to four pages. I have, however, just found a useful shortcut. There is a government website which you can contact and magically all public authorities will be informed of your new address.
But it is the decorating which is the most stressful part. Again, I should be counting my blessings. Most of the house is being painted by decorators, but there are two rooms which have been left for me to do. Now I was quite excited by this. I have not done much decorating for a while. We knew that we would not be in our present house for that long and so it seemed sensible to stick with the harmless pastels of a former show-home.
You may well have seen the house before we moved in. It must have been the most disconcerting feature of my moving to Gamlingay, having villagers approach me to say that they knew what my bedroom was like - because they had had a good look round when the house was a show-home.
Anyway, I have not decorated for ages and so I was enthusiastic about flexing my designer muscles. I suppose that this excitement was encouraged by television programmes such as "Changing Rooms". I was full of great ideas about striking colour schemes, ripping up carpets and stone-washing the floor and sticking stones on the wall, because that is exactly the sort of design feature which we are encouraged to think our houses need. I even thought about making something out of M.D.F. (which I think stands for Massive Disastrous Furniture) or even transform my bed into a four-poster, with swathes of material draped luxuriously. Perhaps the room would even be featured in "Home and Garden" or "Hello".
But the reality was very different. How can three people transform a room in 48 hours, when it takes me weeks just to get the painting done? Why can they get away with one coat when I need three, even when I am painting over magnolia? Why cannot I paint in a straight line and, when I use masking tape, why does it take off the paint from the area which I have masked, meaning that I have to put the tape on the area I have just painted etc.? Why does the big pot of paint which will 'easily cover an average size room' not cover my average size room and, when I go back to the shop for more, find that they run out of that particular colour? And I have not even started on the floor yet. So, if anybody has any decorating tips, please do send them to me. We could even start a new column. How about 'paint-splattered welly'?
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