The joiner has finished, the carpet’s ordered and I’ve just finished three coats of satinwood on the skirting boards, architraves and doors on our sitting room. Why am I doing this at 7.30pm when I’ve been working like a dog in my day job? Because I’m stupid that’s why. I have this idiotic idea that it’s a good thing to try to finish some parts of our home so that we’re not living in a constant mess of builders rubble and brick dust.

My painting technique has no finesse and, in the case of ‘glossing’ I get no joy from it at all. I hate working with oil based paints – they stink, are sticky and take ages to dry. In fact, when I started coat two of this job on Sunday morning at 8am (yep – stupid again), I spent about half an hour picking dog hair out of coat 1, done on Saturday afternoon.

Coat two was done immediately before setting off ‘oop north’ on Sunday, with me barricaded into the room with an arrangement of chairs in front of both doorways so I didn’t end up starting coat three by picking dog hair out of coat two.

If you're wondering about the colour - it's a compromise - neither of us likes 'brilliant white' because it goes yellow so we both agree we may as well paint it a yellowy off-white and 'go with the flow'. Me? If I had my way, I'd have been painting it a rich terracotta colour but I didn't get my way! (On this occasion!!!???!!!)

Anyway, it’s done now and I move onto the next ‘job’. Real life just goes on.....

Last year, garlic in black and white.