Stripping

The DIY expert from the end of the road came along this morning to borrow my axe. I'm not sure what he wanted it for. He didn't say and I didn't like to ask. As he was wandering off with the axe over his shoulder, he stopped.
"What are you up to at the moment?"
"Nothing," I said. "Absolutely nothing at all."
At that point I felt a sudden and dark cloud of guilt descend on me. Which is how I came to spend the day stripping in the little room under the stairs.
The guy who lived in the house before us called it 'the telephone room'. Delusions of grandeur I guess.
We put a WC and a washbasin in there and some lousy wallpaper and called the room the downstairs WC. There's still a telephone in there just in case someone calls mid bowel movement.
Nothing is allowed to interrupt the call of nature in Bogsville Heights.
I was in that little room stripping away merrily from 10.00am until about 3.00pm which is much longer than I'd intended.
I'd reckoned on an hour to strip the wallpaper, an hour for lunch, an hour to slap some paint on the walls and half an hour to clear up.
In the event I got most of the paper off the walls but it just seemed to get stuck to the oak floor.



When Mrs B. came home it took her two hours to notice that I'd been doing anything. Just goes to show what a state the wallpaper was in.
I don't think she'd have noticed at all if she hadn't changed her shoes and found bits of paper stuck all over them.
If she'd come home an hour earlier she'd have gone for the axe from the end of the road.