Well, I’m now working from home. I’m not going to go into too many details but for this week, so far so good. This also means that I have some more time to get on with other things, like helping the Mrs with the house redecorating. We only have two areas left to do, the rear hallway and downstairs bathroom. It works out quite well, she removes the old wallpaper and washes the wall, I come along with the Polyfilla and fill all the holes and cracks, sand it down when dry, then she washes the wall again and paints it.

I don’t understand how British home-owners decorate. Every house I’ve lived in has wallpaper on top of wallpaper on top of wallpaper on top of wallpaper. Doesn’t anyone in this country remove the old paper first? No wonder rooms are getting smaller!

Speaking of wallpaper, there’s a legend that there’s a house in London which was redecorated soon after 1840 with some new wallpaper. 1840 saw the issue of the Penny Black stamps, and the legend goes that a fairly wealthy homeowner liked the look of these so much that he decorated an entire room by using sheets of these as wallpaper. Now as mentioned above, NOBODY removes the old wallpaper first, so the likelihood is that this (now very expensive) wallpaper lies buried under several other layers. Now wouldn’t that be a find!