What’s happened to all the time? Where did Monday go? It’s Tuesday now and I have a full day’s activities planned for today. But before I start today’s jobs I have decided to take a break and to reflect on where my time is going. I seem to have less time for ‘I’ things now than I did before retirement.


There are two issues keeping me from ‘I’ things, the Forth Bridge and Christine.


The Forth Bridge looks like being an ongoing problem. You know the saying ‘when you finish painting the Forth Bridge it’s time to start again’, well the cottage now feels like that. I am nearly at the end of completely decorating every room in the cottage following the major extension and refurbishment completed last January and already Christine is talking about changing this colour or that carpet and can we just re-do this ceiling or that wall as a feature. Can I just put up this cabinet or these shelves, oh and in the meantime can we think about a terrace on the back of the cottage. She doesn’t understand why I throw a wobbler when she starts talking about changes when I still haven’t finished the first run through yet.


So I think of the two issues, the Forth Bridge and Christine it’s Christine that causing me more problems.


We all know what she’s like, rather than have a final plan up front she likes to let things develop as we go along which I must admit leads to an excellent result but very often needs me to change tack in the middle of doing things. Rooms that start off being Breakfast Room Green may well finish up as Green Ground and I still don’t understand where the paint companies get these names from. But it’s not just paint, halfway through the Breakfast Room the picture rail had to disappear as well as the colour change so out came the polyfiller and then more painting.


As I say we are nearly there, but it’s a battle to the end. We have only the front and back doors to paint now, nothing of job to us, a morning will see them completed except we, and by we of course here I mean Christine can’t decide on the colour. We have once again got every colour chart out, Dulux, Crown, Zoffany, Little Green Paint Company to say nothing of International and of course Christine’s favourite Farrow and Ball. All these and we are getting nowhere. The big problem is that on our recent trip up to the lakes for our 40th aniversary she saw a cottage with a front door the exact colour she wanted which I promptly took a photograph of and she is now trying to match that photo to the colour charts. I jokingly suggested that I would go back and knock on the door and ask them what colour it was which Christine thought was a good idea and could I go today. I could be there and back in six hours she says.


Fortunately just then Maureen a friend of ours who is also doing up an old house on Beverley calls in for a coffee. Maureen as well as working for a living is a very good artist so she obviously has an eye for colour and immediately starts going through the charts with Christine. Words like ‘texture’ and ‘pigment’ and ‘depth’ are being discussed and I notice that the Dulux and Crown charts have been discarded so we are now into posh paint at posh prices. Two coffees and a packet of biscuits later we have a decision Farrow and Ball Lichen. What colour is Lichen? Apparently it’s green.


So there we have it the last decision, one small tin of Farrow and Ball a mornings work and we have finished, I can put my feet up and relax ready for our short break in the Bahamas starting on Sunday. Where do we get Farrow and Ball, “Home Base” says Christine so on Monday morning we are off, it’s a forty minute drive but this is it the last tin of paint. I wondered if I should have some sort of ceremonial purchasing of the last tin, but it didn’t matter anyway Home Base don’t sell Farrow and Ball gloss paint. We hadn’t checked and of course because I didn’t want to be held responsible for wasting time, I made sure I quickly expressed surprise that Christine hadn’t rung them up before we set off to ensure they had the paint. That quickly fulfilled my age old project manager adage of making sure there was always someone else to blame if things go wrong.


We have now ordered the paint on the Net, so that’s expensive paint plus a delivery charge, but it’s due on Thursday so the painting can still be finished before we go off for a few weeks.


My main concern is that I did not get too upset about the wasted journey to Home Base or the exorbitant cost of a small tin of paint or even the delay in completing the painting. A few months ago I would probably have had at least a little rant about these issues but now .... nothing! It worries me. Am I getting used to being at home? Am I getting used to Christine? Am I becoming a ‘we’? It’s worrying.