Real Life | 3 January 2019

1 January. Rooms left in house to decorate: 1 (only the attic, therefore doesn’t count).Walls plastered by self with no help from man: 1 (vg!!). Reconciliations with ex-builder boyfriend for the festive season owing to total collapse of self-belief right on cue at year end, notwithstanding evidence of self-sufficiency in newly plastered walls: 1 (must do better).

Am plastering genius, it turns out. After faffing about with something called a hawk to no particular avail, I ended up chucking all the tools on the floor in exasperation and plastering the dining room with my rubber-gloved hands.

It was a bit like baking, only instead of kneading dough in a bowl, I was kneading British Gypsum MultiFinish on to my walls.

The effect was stunning, unlike any plastering I have ever seen before, except perhaps on Grand Designs when those rich couples desert south Kensington for an eco-hipster encampment in Wales, where they build a roundhouse using only dung while camping with their five children in a tent for three years, then tell Kevin McCloud about the amazing ‘journey’ they have been on as grimy tears run down their newly toothless faces.

My walls were just as artistic. They were pink and swirly, not flat and smooth like boring old professional plastering.

Tip: squirt some washing-up liquid into your bucket of plaster as you mix in the water. It acts as a plasticiser. Don’t even ask how I know that, it’s a gift. When I get desperate enough, I have moments of divine inspiration. I hear voices in my head. Let’s just say the fairy godmother of plastering told me to do it, and it worked a treat.

Why, then, did I take it upon myself to text the ex-builder boyfriend to tell him about my plastering triumph, resulting in jovial banter, resulting in something like a rapprochement? Only, as usual with the builder b, it never gets as far as a proper rapprochement (a properochement) because we end up infuriating each other half to death within a couple of days.