Tomorrow the world. Today, painting and decorating
I woke up, knowing full well my day wouldn’t be spent writing a Magnum™ opus. That’s a little joke I say occasionally to entertain myself and others. Are you not entertained? That’s a film reference.
Anyway, I woke up in the full knowledge that my day would not be spent writing a hit novel or a failed novel, pabulum for the masses, pamphlets for the few, slogans for the impressionable, travel articles for bored commuters, PR speak for the curious and/or unhappy, or anything else for that matter. I woke up knowing I wasn’t going to write at all.
And yet when I did wake up, it only crossed my mind half an hour later that I’d not written a damn thing in days, and nothing to write home about in months. True, I was editing a book, but it wasn’t writing. It was more pleasurable than that.
The thing was, I’d written a novel by accident, a little number that’d begun life as a couple of short stories in 2015. That’s not quite accurate. One I’d started as far back as 2014, while still in Prague, where I lived for some years. Sweden its name was, though I’m not sure it was always called that, and by the time I was done with it, it was post-op to say the least, nothing like the cock and bull mess of earlier incarnations.
It was about a German I’d met in Berlin, a guy obsessed with Sweden who, like me, was inclined to escapist fantasies, needed them too. For a long time, the story didn’t work. I wrote and chopped, pruned and added, but no good came of it. I wrote about a few games of chess we really did play, and a concert I went to with my girlfriend, but something was missing. It wasn’t ’til I was back in England with the girlfriend lost irreparably (Prague too for that matter) that I realised the real story wasn’t about chess or even the German but about me, John Brogan.
Brogan, that’s an Irish surname, derived from bróg, or shoe. Shoes. They’re things you wear on your feet, occasionally your hands if trying to do an impression of four-legged creatures, and even more occasionally your ears if possible, to amuse friends and lovers, sometimes both at the same time. That’s also a near-unforgivable digression.
Anyway, after Sweden came Rainbows & Bottletops, which was largely about booze, for which I’d a fondness; and Fluoxetine, for which I’d a dependence, or would have if it wasn’t thought a non-addictive drug. People told me it was, but they didn’t take it and besides, they were addicted to other things like telly and wellness and cigarettes and cake and everything in between. That said, I’ve a hankering for a Mars Bar now, so who am I to judge?
Both stories were finished before Christmas 2016 and published on my tumblefeed, otherwise known as my website; a site as popular as Millwall FC with the rich, the bedroom tax the poor, Islam with factions of both and Super Malt with white people.
I published the stories not so much to be read but to show I’d been up to something, writing, active; to show (as much to myself as anyone else) that I still had a way with words, even though my success to date amounted to an interview with Dave Davies of Kinks fame, an interview in which we both agreed football was good, meditation had its merits (I played along) and sometimes all you could do was cry (I played along with that too). Then again, he did admit being up for a reunion with his brother, so I guess in a way I’m responsible for that. I brought the Kinks back together in one phone call. It took West and East Germany over forty years.
No, there was never meant to be any kind of book, and when there was one (I realised by pure dint of numbers I could probably label it a novel) it was only supposed to be a collection of short stories, an anthology, and self-published too, the stories too rambling and off-topic to be of interest to anyone bar myself, and even then with limitations.
But after writing them, I realised maybe there was something in there after all. Why not give it a go? I’d tried getting published twice before, once at 23, once between the ages of 26 and 27. I wasn’t investing too much hope in it, but after all was said and done, there was a novel in my hands. Of sorts.
And I knew now, it wasn’t just about me, it was about her too. Prague and her. Like everything in my life, it harked back to Hitler’s planned retirement home. It’s a pity there aren’t better famous spokespersons for Prague, but I can’t think of another notable figure with the same love for the Czech capital. Kundera never returned post-Revolution, which the Prahas never forgave him for, while they never took to Kafka as one of their own, for the crime of being German and Jewish, sometimes both of the same time. Besides, neither seemed to be overly in love with the city, primarily because they’d lived there and experienced all the joy and despair that comes with that. You can’t love a city you’ve lived in, though you can adore it.
Anyway, I’d a book in my hands, and was going to send it to agents after all, having realised the whole self-publishing thing wasn’t for me. Today wasn’t to be that day, however, for through my own stupidity, I’d spent much of the past week painting and decorating, something I’d not planned to do. Why was I painting and decorating?
Foolishism, that’s why. Like Easter sales, it began in December.
I often worked from home. My bedroom was more than just a place where I laid my head after a day of work. But like most rented rooms in London, it wasn’t fit to be a bedroom. There was a shelf attached to the wall in the far corner that gave it the look of an office, and the dimensions of the room were too rectangular for a bedroom.
A properly designed bedroom is asymmetrical in shape, to accommodate the chaos of the individual within, the need for a bed rather than a floor, space for shelves and drawers and cupboards for all the things they have, which they wouldn’t if only they were slightly more stupid. And of course, the human demand for natural light.
No, my bedroom wasn’t fit for purpose. It was more like a neatly proportioned office, where you sat up straight (or in my case, hunched over) and looked dead ahead for hours at a time. It wasn’t a place of pleasure, oneiric, physical or otherwise.
And with that in mind, I’d decided to hang some photos and make it more homely, two of friends, two of Czech mountains, a two by two Noah’s ark of photographical memory.
She’d given me those last two, of the mountains.
I’d framed them, and now I wanted them hung, so as to make my room nicer and my memories more unforgiving. I thought it would be straightforward. That was naïve. I was no builder. Despite sourcing a hammer and some nails I’d not a clue what I was doing. But I gave it a go. As I struck the first nail into the wall, I was surprised by the sound it gave off. I’d hammered nails into walls before, but this was something else.
Our neighbours upstairs had a young child, and decency demanded I not make a racket. That was my problem. It wasn’t that I was too considerate (I’d certainly stumbled home drunk and noisily before), more that I was too cautious of my own self, of the iniquity of my being. Who was I to make noise? What gave me the right?
I stood in my office-like room for minutes, wondering what to do. After all the effort I’d gone to in carrying the materials back from my parents’ home in Dollis Hill to Finsbury Park, not using the nails felt a waste. But I didn’t want to upset the neighbours. Of that much I was sure.
In the end it seemed better not to hang the photos, so I placed them on the nails, hoping to get them in far enough that they might remain in place. And sure enough, they hung. It would do. But even in saying it to myself, I knew it was no a long-term solution. They were all aslant. It was only a matter of time before they fell. Something had to be done.
Leaving the house, I walked to the local DIY store. I’d been to DIY stores before to get what I needed without much fuss. And as far as I remembered, it’d always ended well, whether it was removing mould from a bathroom or fixing a curtain rail. Yes, I sort of knew what I was doing when it came to the world of DIY. The thing with me was that I tried. God loves a trier, and were it not for the atheism and the occasional idolatrous Instagram photo, Brogan the Trier would have been up there with his (or hers, but no, his) favourites.
I knew nothing of carpentry (but much about its most famous son, in fairness, even less about plumbing. Words like wainscoting and cladding I knew, though only from novels. But I tried.
My previous flat had suffered from a build-up of mould around the bathroom ceiling and I’d taken it upon myself to do something about it. That’s what real men did, or so I’d heard.
In the shop I quickly found what I needed without asking for help. No More Nails. That was the dish of the day, to not think about or feel or work with another nail. I bought the product and went home. Holding the cylindrical tube in my hand, it was only then that it dawned on me that it would need a caulking gun. This should have been obvious. Why’d I not thought of this at the time? Because I was a fool, that’s why.
There was nothing for it. I would have to go back in the morning. Fortunately, in the interim period I was still able to work on the mould, which had collated around the woodwork over the past few months. I sprayed remover on the window frames and the ceiling apex. The smell was powerful. I’d goggles and a dust mask on, but still worried about breathing it in. Having smoked more cigarettes than Nina Simone, I probably had my priorities upside down, but it’s undeniable that a Camel Blue or even a Lucky Strike red smells (and tastes) a hell of a lot nicer than mould remover. The marketers can have that one free of charge.
The mould remover began to trickle down the wall, gravity doing what gravity does. I jumped off my chair, ran to the kitchen, grabbed several pieces of kitchen towel and returned, wiping the stray drips of mould remover and hoping the various lines now running down the walls wouldn’t leave a mark. With that hurdle overcome, I began to remove the mould with a sponge. To my disappointment, it came away with ease, and I wondered whether I might have achieved the same results with a dry sponge, saving myself a heap of time and money. Nevertheless, as the fumes began to kick in, it was clear to me we were making progress. After a couple of minutes, there were no visible signs of mould anywhere in the room. Hoping it would look that way when it was dry, I got off the chair, threw away the sponge, opened the window, changed, washed my hands for three minutes solid (with lots of soap) and went into the living room to rest. It was a good day’s work.
In the morning I awoke with the intention of writing before hanging the pictures. But after setting my alarm clock to 5:45 (optimistic), I rolled over and decided to rest my eyes for ten minutes, which segued into another hour and fifteen.
That mightn’t seem like much, but it was an hour (and a bit) I’d set aside for writing, and now it was gone. I told myself (and the World) writing was the most important thing in my life, yet often left it to last. It wasn’t easy, but worse was that it didn’t come easy. There was a difference.
Difficult writing could be done with relative ease if you persevered (and didn’t value it). Writing you cared for only came when in a trance-like state; the result of concentration, years of practice and, most importantly, mistakes.
It reminded me of Anthology, the Beatles documentary, which I had watched years earlier on a DVD player in my bedroom. I remembered Paul McCartney talking about George Harrison’s early attempts to introduce songs into the group’s repertoire, how they were rejected, and how important that was. He’d had to go through that phase just like Paul and John, before he could write good. This, the guy who ended up writing If Not For You, had written bad once. That was important.
Prose was the same, the crap you’d put out three or four years ago somehow made you better. But the fear remained that what you wrote now was just the same, that you lived under the same delusions you had for years, thinking you’d improved while remaining nothing more than a hopeful fool.
Nevertheless, with all that in mind, it was still important for me to write before seven. I knew my tendency to be distracted or lazy the afternoons. I hated that about myself, wanting to write yet unable to sit still for more than three hours, that in itself a rarity. I could write huge chunks of text in fifteen minutes, thousands of words even, but the idea of staying still for hours was beyond me. That wasn’t good.
With seven o’clock approaching, I needed to write before it was too late. That’s when I made the mistake of checking my emails.
Men hoping for better things around the corner check their emails in much the same way men once gazed up at the stars in the faint hope something, anything will come; work, a chance to get away, a change. Rain. Women. War. Purpose. In my case, I’d been pitching editors of travel magazines for the previous few months, living in the hope a story would be accepted, or that I’d receive a random offer of work. It rarely got replies but today there was an email from an editor I’d contacted days earlier.
Hi John, good to hear from you.
With regards to your email, I’m looking for interesting ideas on Belgium, France or Luxembourg at the moment. Feel free to send anything you have across and I’ll take a look.
Luxembourg was a no goer, its main points of interest Carl Junker’s acerbic wit and an interesting set of tax arrangements. France and Belgium, however, I could sell. Writing would have to wait for an hour. Just this once. And so I set about researching an idea I had for a piece on Brussels’ fantastic comic-book street art. It didn’t matter that I didn’t read or know about comics. It was a hook, of sorts. I researched famous artists, put their names into my 250-word email and found a few other attractions around the city to sprinkle on top, to give the editor a sense of what I was talking about. It was ideal if at least one of us knew.
By the time I finished, there was a deep hunger in me; not the metaphorical fires of passion and creativity, simply a keen need for nourishment. I’d only had one cup of coffee. Getting up, I jumped in the shower, changed and proceeded to make breakfast. Naturally, I started with the coffee, pouring two and a half heaped spoons of grounded into the cafetiere and boiling the kettle. Meanwhile, I put oats into a large pan with an inch of water and put the burner on. After warming up the water and oats, I added milk and some fruit; a banana chopped up with a handful of nuts and dried raisins and sultanas.
When the porridge began to bubble I took it off the burner and put it in a bowl before gently pressing down the cafetiere and pouring out the coffee, which smelled fantastic, as coffee is wont to do. I sat in the living room with my coffee and my breakfast. Despite eating quickly, it was half eight by the time I returned to my room and got back to work on my pitch; polishing the email, checking the facts, then finally sending it off. And then I was done, able to return to what I’d intended to do all along; write.
But now I wasn’t in a fiction-writing mindset, whatever that meant, and decided to practice vocabulary for a while instead. I loved learning new words, and had compiled a huge list over the last couple of years, which had sat there unloved and unlearned for a long time. It was only right they be given some attention. After looking at those familiar to me (around fifty), I despaired upon realising I’d misunderstood, and would have to relearn them. I deleted the sentences I’d written out by way of practicing and decided to start over. I would learn my words.
That done, I went on Facebook for five minutes to see what the world was up to, before going onto The Guardian homepage, before quickly veering towards The Guardian football page in all its anodyne glory.
And by the time I’d done that, it was coming up to 9 a.m. The writing could wait a while. It was time to go to the DIY store and get glued up.
It was that cold, bleak period between Christmas and New Year, but I felt good. It was meant to be cold. Christmas was the one time of the year I didn’t mind it being bitter, as long as it didn’t rain. I’d not the optimism to think it would snow at Christmas in London, and I hated sunny weather on Christmas Day. It didn’t feel right, the low-hanging sun in the sky at odds with the image of Christmas I had been fed since birth; of dark, starry skies and cold, snowy streets and the warmth of being stuck indoors with family.
I’d always found those days between Christmas and New Year unsettling as a child. School was out, but so was the ecstatic joy of Christmas (presents); gone, for as long as it would be all year. There were toys to play with — and how — but I always knew something had been lost irreparably. Christmas, after a fleeting visit, gone again. As I got older that period improved, the sheer benefit of not having to go to high school clear to me. As most of my presents were video games, it made little difference whether I was playing them on Christmas Day or the twenty-eighth of December. That was the beauty of 2-D entertainment and a virginity feted to linger.
But things changed when I hit adulthood, or a simulacrum thereof. I was always anxious, especially so at my childhood home. I didn’t know why, perhaps because I was supposed to look after myself now and felt childlike again, or because it felt like being confined as I had been — appropriately — as a child, when leaving was a matter of getting permission, of informing others where I was going at all times. Even now, it was a safe, happy place, but I was restless to be out and about, jogging perhaps, pubbing preferably. Those days before New Year had a ghostly quality, and although I’d all the time in the world, I never knew what to do. Or, as with writing, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than pointless activities like playing video games or watching TV. Though pointless has its place. Like Connect Four. Or Kardashians.
But this year, I was enjoying the quiet of the pre-New Year period. There were fewer people on the roads. People had time off. It was a time to enjoy life and hang pictures on the wall. So I walked up to the Stroud Green Road, glad to discover the DIY store already open. I walked inside.
— Hey mate, I said. — I bought the wrong kind of glue yesterday by mistake. Any chance I can just swap it?
He looked at me for a second, judging me (rightly) for my stupidity, and nodded before stacking shelves once more. I swapped the calking-gun glue for a squeezable bottle, left, walked down the street and went into a grocery store, where I bought three bananas, an apple and two oranges. With fruit in tow, I walked further down the street and bought a cappuccino — the life of Riley, in Brogan’s shoes.
I drank it on the way home and then rinsed the cup for the recycling, feeling guilty for forgetting to bring my reusable cup with me. I should’ve known I’d get coffee. I more or less always got coffee when I left the flat. But at least I was recycling this one, instead of throwing it in the bin. That was good. I worried about paper coffee cups. There were billions of them out there, lined with plastic, topped with a plastic lid, probably less than one per cent ever recycled, piling high somewhere (the sea mainly), a towering, subaqueous edifice of the sin that was human existence. I worried about paper coffee cups.
Not now, however. Now, I’d more immediate, pressing concerns to contend with. Back at home, I placed the photos on my bed, opened the glue and drew a rectangular shape around the frame edges. I picked one up and placed it against the wall. Why I didn’t see the omens escapes me now, but as I stuck it to the surface, I was happy. It was almost perfectly symmetrical. A few drops of No-More-Nails glue seeped out of the edges but nothing excessive. I cleaned them away with a cloth, did the same to the other photos and soon had myself four (almost) perfectly symmetrical photos. I took a step back. The room looked homely. I was at home.
I was happy now. All would be well from hereon in. I would finally be calm. I would get a job soon. And frequently paid work. I might even get a girlfriend. Things were going to be good.
I moved out of the flat at the end of January.
Changes can be like mosquito bites; if you don’t see them coming, the bite is twice as fierce. After Christmas at home, I’d looked forward to the New Year, but after the New Year, I realised I’d nothing to look forward to in the flat. It was too small. It always had been.
Scaffolding had gone up three weeks after I moved in, making an already dark first-floor flat even darker. But when it came down in early November, the flat remained a small, dark place, unideal for someone who worked mostly from home.
I told myself I was going to stay. I didn’t want to move again. After leaving Prague suddenly at the tail end of 2014, I’d moved to Oval, only to move out the following June. I didn’t want the words following and move or out to be combined again in my life for some time. And that’s why I’d put the photos up. To create the illusion of home.
It was no good though. I couldn’t afford a bigger place, but the darkness was getting to me. I would have to find somewhere, perhaps out of town. I told my housemate, who understood, and went about finding a replacement tenant. That was easy enough. Less easy was dealing with the marks left on the wall. It had said No More Nails. It had never said no more marks, no marks at all or sure, put glue on wallpaper, it won’t leave a huge, photo-frame shaped imprint on the surface. It had never said that.
What had I been thinking? Naturally, I blamed depression. I’d been stressed at the time, beset by underlying anxiety (it had its uses). I’d put the photos up to convince myself I could be a tenant in a flat untenable. I hadn’t been looking after myself. That was it. In this new age of loving the self above all else, I’d tried to make life easier for everyone; my housemate, the letting agency, the publicans of The Old Dairy, The Stapleton and The Shaftesbury Tavern. I’d let eagerness to please get the better of me. That, or I was just a fool.
— It doesn’t look good, mate, my housemate said, trying hard not to sound overly critical as I showed him the marks.
That was the opposite of what I’d hoped he’d say.
— I’ll fix it, I told him, unsure how I would.
But I would. That was all that mattered now.
My mind is like the weather in Central Europe; it functions, though only in extremes. Something is either utterly impossible or inevitable. Once I’ve an idea in my head, it’s not that I possess an indomitable drive (God no) to see it out, more that the idea takes on a certain reality, kidding the inner self that it’s not just possible it will come to fruition, but a nigh-on certainty. I will — despite all evidence to the contrary — become a great footballer, an accomplished musician and a singer of great talent, even with the incontrovertible proof to the contrary that I’m no good at any of those things, my mind convinces me it will happen. Once the smallest seed of plausibility is sewn, it’s just a matter of time before it becomes fact. That’s how I’ve survived this far, how I’ve taken the disappointments and traumas, the malaises and unfathomables. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it worked for John Brogan. Cobblers, yes, but I’m John Brogan, of or pertaining to shoes. So it goes.
And so it went with the wallpaper.
I looked at the marks. Yes, they were bad. But they were not unfixable. Nothing was, aside from Liverpool Football Club.
I’d not a lot of decorating experience, except for a few domestic DIY painting jobs over the years, and one brief labouring gig that saw me climb atop a 30-foot ladder and paint a wall near Bermondsey station, a good gig which spared me lugging bricks between site and skip for two days. That was nice.
I left the house at eight-thirty the following morning with the intent and purpose of a man possessed. I walked towards the bus stop, towards Muswell Hill and Wickes, which opened at nine. I was early to every meeting or appointment in my life, and was trying to do something about that. I didn’t want to be standing outside Wickes like a hairy lemon, waiting for it to open, so I left as late as possible to get there just after. No, I didn’t want to be early. But I did want to get this show on the road.
I got the 91 bus from Hornsey Rise, marvelling at my fellow passengers, who by their very nature cast a light upon me. To a man and woman they were either elderly or infirm in some way that prevented them from working; yet here I was, able-bodied, in theory at least. The bus went through Hornsey, up the hill and into Crouch End. The sudden change struck me even though I’d seen it time and time again; the streets cleaner, the people cheerier, the bookies fewer, the loons wrought insane by poverty or drink or both absent too. The Mafia mums of Crouch End and their prams were out in numbers, loathe to give an inch of turf to passers by. For this reason, I tended to avoid Crouch End. The mothers of Crouch End own the pavements, and you’d be a fool to challenge their double-heeled, four-wheeled authority.
Eventually, I reached Muswell Hill. I got off the bus and began to walk to the shop. On my way I noticed a familiar figure, the comedian Sean Locke. He had a light beard I’d never seen before. On him, that is. I’ve seen many a beard, mostly in the mornings when – and if I can – look in the mirror.
He looked miserable, but I don’t think he was miserable, just deep in thought. It was cold and windy, and he was probably thinking about whatever it was he’d left the house to buy; a prescription, a paper, some fags. Maybe he’d fucked up a wall in his house too.
I walked around the corner to Wickes. It was closed. I looked at my watch. It was 9:20. I checked my phone and the address. It should have been open by now. I was outraged. The Internet had lied to me. Wickes had lied to me. They’d both lied to me.
My first instinct was to find Mr Locke. I’d never met him, but knew he’d been a builder once. Maybe he still kept a foot in the game. Maybe he’d know where I could find some wallpaper. Then again, he was a comedian now, and might think me insane, that I’d used the wallpaper as a ruse to talk to him because he was famous. That was the last thing I wanted him to think. I decided not to stalk and find Mr Locke.
I jumped on the first bus home, pulled out my mobile, and looked up the nearest Homebase, in Manor House. That was nearly forty-five minutes away. It was bitter out; I’d no mind to be walking in that, so instead I got off in Finsbury, went to the grocery store and bought two apples, two bananas and four satsumas because there was a four for one deal on. I gave up on wallpaper for the morning.
I went home, looked around the dark flat. I decided to get some exercise. I put my gear into a backpack, put on Say It Like You Mean It by Hiss Golden Messenger and ran the short, five-minute run to the gym. After arriving, I put on To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar and worked out for just under an hour. It felt good to get some exercise after the Christmas excess. And as I walked home, I experienced the kind of luck that only comes around once in a blue moon. For some, it’s finding the love of their life or the job of their dreams. In my case, it was wallpaper. I usually walked home from the gym via the backstreets, but for whatever reason, on this day, I’d walked up the Holloway Road, where I found a builder’s merchants. I walked in, still in my gym gear.
— Do you sell woodchip wallpaper, I asked the lad standing nearest to the doorway.
— Uhm, woodchip, not sure mate, we might have to order it in.
— We’ve got woodchip, came a voice from behind us.
We both turned. A man in his late-forties pointed to an aisle about ten metres away.
— Should be over there, Chris.
Chris led the way and, lo and behold, there was woodchip wallpaper.
— This what you’re looking for?
I’d done my research. It was.
— I’ll come back in a while, I told Chris. — I’ve no money with me now.
Leaving the shop, I felt a wave of relief. The most important element of the rodeo was in place. I walked home, listening to Hiss golden Messenger, Cracked Windshield. It was a cold, dark, wintery song, beautiful in its simplicity; just a few chords and an acoustic guitar and MC Taylor’s plangent voice that always sounded southern, even though he was from California. That tickled me. Taylor brought me comfort in a way family or friends and even books and beer couldn’t. There was something about music, something in the mix of artistry and pure sound that made me feel as if I understood feeling, for once; understood why not everything could be voiced or measured in words.
I went home, showered, changed and returned to the shop to buy what I needed. As well as woodchip wallpaper I got paste, spray to remove the current, damaged sheet, dust sheets (four, so’s to be on the safe side), and a device which looked like a medieval tool of torture but was, I was told (by Youtube), designed to put pinprick-sized holes in the current strip of wallpaper, making it easier to remove.
I had everything I could possibly need to remove and replace wallpaper. It was a huge relief, even though I’d not finished. I wanted to get some writing done today, a little at least. I was so far behind.
But first, I had to get started on the decorating, to assuage the guilt I felt for messing up the wall, a guilt that morphed into self-doubt, the constant feeling I was doing something wrong. The photo debacle was more than just a DIY nightmare. It was a test of my ability to overcome myself. That much was clear.
I collated the materials; the woodchip wallpaper, the wallpaper paste, the bucket I’d bought to mix it in, the brush, the medieval torture weapon-like device for puncturing holes in the current, damaged sheets of wallpaper, the scraper, and perhaps most importantly, the dust sheets. I wouldn’t need them just yet, but they were going to play a pivotal role if I were to avoid any further fuck-uppery.
Although I didn’t need the wallpaper paste yet, I decided to read the packaging while making coffee. I’d already packed up my cold brew, so instead I used my housemate’s small cafetiere. I loved it dearly. It only made one cup. I’d had Moka Pots and caffetieres over the years which made numerous cups of coffee, or one and a half cups of coffee, but never just one. I knew my own nature. If coffee was sitting there, I would drink it. I poured half an inch of hot water into the bottom to get it warm, then added a hefty spoon and a half of granulated, strength 4 coffee and added more liquid to that, pouring almost to the top, with enough room left so that I could put the plunger on knowing it wouldn’t spill everywhere once I plunged.
The wallpaper paste too needed to be well mixed with liquid. My tendency was to go light on water, heavy on the product, but I figured I’d best follow the instructions to the letter. I had a habit for getting these kinds of things wrong. After a minute and a half I plunged the coffee, then poured in some milk and stirred with the last clean spoon in the kitchen before laying down two dustsheets in my room. It was then that I realised I had forgotten the most important thing. The spray.
I needed to use a spray to ease up the glue so it could be easily scraped away with the scraper. After all, without the spray the glue would not scrape away with ease. It would come away, eventually, I was sure, but it wouldn’t be scraping, more like stabbing or jabbing or invading, thereby making the scraper redundant, at least in terms of what it was called. And names were important.
I sprayed the wall, orange liquid dissipating everywhere. I imagined the chemical mixture attacking the bonded glue, softening it, destroying it; making my life easier. After five minutes (I read the instructions on the spray too) I began working away. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. Bits of paper on the fringes came away easily but the further into the hinterlands I got, the more resistant it became. I decided to sack off convention and spray the wall with abandon. After that, the paper came away more quickly and with greater ease. It took a long time, but eventually there was next to no wallpaper left. Instead, the wall behind was clear, it’s lime-green surface staring back at me. I was proud to have got this far, but it was a reminder that I had a long way to go. After all, a bare wall was arguably worse than a wall with just a few photo frame marks.
Waiting for the wall dry, I caught up on emails and read the news, then got back to work, laying out a dustsheet on the floor in the living room and another on the table. I watched a video online about how to put up wallpaper, and mixed the water with the paste but — despite trying to follow the instructions — it still came out thick. There was nothing for it but to lather it on and hope for the best. I worked around the edges of the wallpaper and folded it into small rolls as per the video, worried that it might stick together. It did, but only lightly. I went to my bedroom, placed the paper on the floor and then got a chair to stand on. I held the paper and let it unfurl itself, before pressing it down at the edges. There was a small gap about half way down. Carefully, I pulled the paper back out from the wall and readjusted it, reducing the gap. I stood back. The gap was small, but given my worry over the deposit, perhaps I was making it bigger in my mind. Still, it was as good as it would ever get.
I cleaned my hands of the paste, put the mixture in my room in case I needed it again and sat in the living room after clearing up and throwing away the blue dust sheet I’d laid to catch errant wallpaper paste. I checked the news again and Facebook too, and had a quick look at my emails before playing Sporcle for a few minutes, getting 50 out of 53 on African capitals and feeling good about it, but worse about the three I’d not remembered.
Returning to the bedroom half an hour later, I inspected my work. It looked good. It was going to be okay. I felt relieved, but that quickly dissipated. It was obvious it would need painting. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but there were no two ways about it. I could tell myself the shade of wallpaper that’d been there several years was little different from that on the new roll. But I knew my off-white from my beige from my vanilla from my crème from my cream from my brilliant white to my snow white to my brown. That wall was going to need to be painted.
There would be no writing today. There would be no more decorating either, but I left to buy the paint, just in case the shop wasn’t open in the morning. I was running out of time. The writing would have to wait.
In the morning I got up early to work on the wall. I had my paint, which had been an ordeal to purchase, but no more than getting up in the morning or trying to remember to pack everything I needed for the gym or talking to women or getting on the Central Line any time morning, day or night.
I’d left the dustsheet in my room, and now laid down another two — pink and red — from the pack of four I’d bought. I hoped to high heaven I’d get this right first time.
I mixed the paint. I felt confi-dent, ready to get down to business. Along with the paint, I’d brought a brush and decided against buying a roller because the costs of the whole project were starting to pile up. I started painting.
I painted the new roll first, hoping it would magically disappear under the fresh layer of (beige) paint. It did not. The lines where it connected with the old were still there, though less obviously so. I elected to keep painting and see what happened. I painted the interior of the wall and then worked on the edges around the door and elsewhere, careful not to get paint on the other walls.
After around twenty minutes, I was finished. I stood back. This time, it looked much better. No, the new roll hadn’t disappeared. It was clear something wasn’t right, but hopefully I would get away with it.
In fixing my folly, I’d neglected the one thing that mattered, the writing. But I couldn’t do that until I finished decorating, and I was nearly there.
What scared me wasn’t that I mightn’t have done a good job (it was beginning to look adequate) but that I didn’t want to finish it, I wanted an excuse not to write, a reason to say mañana again and again, to justify putting to one side the thing that sustained me but left me rent with confusion and doubt and hopelessness and misappropriated hope.
The painting and decorating had taken up too much time, but in truth it’d been a pleasant if expensive distraction. I’d thought the whole time that I wanted it to be over as soon as possible, but in truth I knew once it was done I’d have no more excuses, knew too that I’d find them somewhere. There was always tomorrow.
Tomorrow the world. Today, painting and decorating
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