Good morning Negative Soundbyters! It’s 5:45am, my left eye is just about open, and I am sitting in front of my laptop hoping that what follows makes you smile – or at best just makes sense! To aid me in this quest I have a few drinks at the ready to get the neurons firing: my green smoothie which is packed with avocado, spinach, cucumber, apple and a banana; and of course a cup of green tea – not because I particularly like it – but the Chinese drink it by the bucket loads and those guys are pretty sharp so my hope is some of that will rub off on this morning’s anecdote! As an aside I used to drink a glass of Innocent Smoothie mixed with orange juice every morning; basically like drinking a can of Coke as far as sugar content was concerned. But no it is just blended fruit so it must be good for me – at least 2 of my 5 a day nailed right there! Er no….sugar is still sugar. But before I get lynched virtually by all the IS drinkers out there, let’s move on….
In terms of globally significant events this week; well – I graduated from my course at Escape The City and am now an official escapee! I have been asked on a number of occasions exactly what we did and I used to describe it as a “career transition” course but in the end it turned out to be so much more. In fact I used to get really animated at times when talking about it; some must of thought it more of a cult than a career programme! (At times Mrs H probably wondered whether she would get a call from me from my hide in the Welsh mountains!)
It was a fantastic twelve-week experience and my tribe (all those in the class with me) were an exceptional bunch. Everyone wanted to change tack; for some it was a matter of degrees; for others it was a matter of a wholesale change. I am probably somewhere in-between (I hear Mrs H breathing an audible sigh of relief!) and I hope that I am able to follow through on some of what I have experienced over the last few months. It would certainly make for a fuller, more enriching life in my view. (I would still wear shoes; sandals at this time of the year is just plain uncomfortable!)
Okay my left eye is now fully open; let’s get on with this morning’s anecdote.
A big Christmassy love to all! (Yikes the festive season is upon us; I had better get my Amazon account fired up; Mrs H asked me how my present-buying was going. I managed to deftly dodge the question by pretending not to hear it!)
Hoddy
So Mrs H and I are standing downstairs in our soon-to-be decorated front room. Without being a complete snobbish knob but the room has some fairly decent proportions – it is possible to swing a cat in a nice wide arc without bashing it into a wall. And the same goes for the room adjacent to it – so basically two felines would not get injured if I swung them simultaneously like those fire dancers do for after-supper entertainment on island resorts.
She turns to me and asks: “What colour should we paint the walls?”
I look behind me to see if that question is actually directed at me because our builder is also in the room and it might be that she doesn’t mean me. This is my hope.
“Christopher!”
Ah yes that’s me so she must be looking to me for an answer. Immediately I am in the “is this a trick question?” camp because I know that she already knows what colours she wants to paint the walls, but I think Mrs H is testing me to see whether I have been paying attention to the many conversations we have had about shades of this and shades of that!
I start mumbling something about “a grey” bit there and some white on that wall…and generally trying to avoid being categorical about anything when suddenly the hand comes up. That’s a signal for me to stop talking. So I stop.
“Pass me the Farrow-and-Ball Colour Palette.” (In case you are not aware, Farrow and Ball is like the Chanel of paints. A thimble costs about £20. It is certainly not man’s best friend; those swinging cats are!)
That’s a simple instruction and therefore something I can do, so I hand over the palette. Mrs H unravels it and starts looking at it intently; like a ship’s captain plotting a course to cross the Baring Sea.
No jokes but there are about a thousand different colours on it; all subtle variations of about five main colours with names like “Smoked Trout”, “Dead Salmon”, “Cooking Apple Green” and “Dorset Cream”. Feels more like a menu selection in a 2 star Michelin restaurant; except perhaps the dead salmon one! White is no longer deemed white. It is “New White”, “House White”, “Joa’s White” (Who the F is Joa?), “Winborne White”, “ Shadow White”…. and it goes on.
So when I answer, “White” Mrs H’s eyebrow begins to arch because I am not being specific enough. (It’s at this sort of juncture that if Mrs H could swing me above her head she would; preferably connecting with all four walls!) And it doesn’t stop there. If you have joinery it’s a different type of paint. If you are painting your ceiling that’s another sort. Words like “emulsion” and “satin finish” only cause me more confusion. You don’t paint walls anymore – you “decorate” them! And what are you decorating – the cornice, the dido rail (I know put an “L” in there and it becomes amusing), the skirting boards? It’s a complete minefield for someone pretty much illiterate in all things DIY, like myself!
Mrs H peers up from her map of colours, points at the wall, fixes me with a look and says “Elephant’s Breath or Purbeck Stone?”. I am like “Say What?” Obviously I don’t say that out loud; instead I walk towards said wall and look intently at it as if being physically closer will somehow aid coming to an appropriate answer. I have a 50:50 chance of getting this correct. Come on Hoddy you can do it!
So I turn back towards the boss and mustering all the confidence I have left, utter “Elephant’s Breath”. It was as if I had said “How about a 2 carat diamond in your stocking this Christmas?” such was the radiance and warmth that emanated from Mrs H on her husband managing to crack the F&B paint assault quiz!
It was only momentary though. Relief comes in very small doses in the Hodson household. Mrs H handed me the paint map and marched into the middle room. I followed. The inquisition was not at an end; this was only the beginning! I momentarily harked back to those days living in a matchbox in Clapham; you literally only needed a thimble of paint and that was it – decorating = TICK. That was sort of manageable from my perspective; I am now in a completely different league although thankfully the captain can tell the difference between “Lime White and Cornforth White”!
OUT.
Pic of the week:
This of the Battersea Powerstation; the purchase of which I was heavily involved in the late 2000s. An iconic London landmark; denuded at present (lacking a few chimneys!). Decorating should be a cinch!
