The holiday is over and we’re back to earth with a bump. After Susie’s belated birthday dinner last week, we settled into our usual routine. I mowed the lawn and Susie processed seemingly innumerable loads of washing. The weather has been hot, so naturally I decided to paint the living room ceiling.

I don’t care to guess how long it is since that ceiling has seen a paintbrush, lets just say it’s a number of years. Having a log burning stove isn’t very likely to keep the ceiling pristine either, it’s smoky and sooty outpourings adhering to the surface like superglue.

When Susie moved in with me (which was over two years ago and I’ve still managed to cling on to my sanity) she brought multiple large tubs of paint. I’ve used a good proportion of these to paint the bedrooms. Confusingly, one of the tubs was marked ‘Ceiling’ and I was reliably informed this was intended for walls. Apparently ‘Ceiling’ was the name of a shade of white. Nevertheless, I found it covers a pickled brown stippled surface quite well and drips minimally.

The plan is to get one coat applied before Friday, unless I pass out with heat exhaustion during next week. Did Michelangelo have someone observing him from below, shouting ‘you missed a bit’?….