The painting
So, back to the rented house after work for a night of solo fun. Yep, you've guessed it (the title was well placed). I was going to finish the painting. I'd completed 3 of the four walls in my previous painting session, so it was time to do the fourth and try to get a 2nd coat on everything. My plan was to do the fourth wall 1st and then do the fourth wall again at the end, by which time it should be dry enough to be able to give it a second coat.

As all performers will know, the fourth wall is all important.

Har de har.

I never even trained as an actor.

So, off I went to do the hardest wall. It was the one with the window, sink, mirror, pipes, radiator and other assorted bits of furniture on it. My painting system involves a paint brush, a small radiator roller and a larger wall roller. The idea is to do the edges with the brush, smooth them out with the radiator roller (which also goes behind radiators and pipes) and then fill in the big bits with the big roller. It's a simple system.

Given that I was going to do the whole thing at night, and given that my previous painting session had been a week previous. I decided to drop into B&Q to get myself a working light and some new roller refils (lest the cheap paint had clotted and rendered useless the existing ones).

Back at the room, plugging in the working light turned out to be a treat. The socket wasn't on, but plugging in the light caused the radiator to make a buzzing noise. I tried two sockets. I was confused about what this meant - I decided that it probably meant that my working light was a pile of poo. More precisely, I reckoned that there was some sort of earth leak between the neutral and earth - meaning that the buzzing noise was the radiator responding to a current passing through it. Not good. Not at all.

So I worked in the dark.

Not quite the total darkness. I have a light in my room and I could see where the roller had been by the change in texture of the reflection of this light. In fairness, I did a good enough job that I can't see bits I've missed, even in full daylight.

The plan seemed to work reasonably well. I'd also adopted a plan for dealing with bits of wallpaper that were falling off - this involved some strong "grab adhesive" which seemed to pull them back onto the wall. Some of the paper was more in the "disintegrating, rather than coming off" stage, which proved more of a challenge. It's now in the "I'll live with it, because it doesn't matter all that much" stage.

I slaved away, working around the pile of all the furniture and possessions in the room, which I'd positioned there when I first moved in - knowing that I'd be doing some painting at some point. I had musicals playing on my computer - using the MP3 player as the library and the computer as the speakers.

The burglary that never was
Around 11.30 I heard clattering upstairs. It could have been a housemate. It might have been an accident. I called upstairs to see what was going on. The clattering worsened. It sounded very much like the noise burglars make when they're burglarising. I went up there more forcefully - butch voice - "WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON".

It was a housemate and he was upset. He'd been trying to sort something out in his room. A few things got knocked over and then I'd come marching up demanding to know what was going on. I pointed out that I thought it might have been someone else, but he was still slightly offended.

However, no actual harm done and I'm sure I have a long way to go to become the most unpopular of the housemates.


To sleep perchance to go into suspended animation
It was a tiring evening and I had been up since early that morning as I had commuted to Farnborough from Southampton.

By 3am, I had everything painted. I had moved the bed out of the way a bit and taken all the crap off it. I had made the bed with fresh (newly bought) linen, duvet and pillows and I had had a shower and towelled myself down with a new towel.

I was ready for sleep.

I got into the bed and I slept.

I really slept.