Saphy’s first bird

I had a hard day yesterday working at decorating.

J’s basement lounge was basically in need of quite a lot of TLC – it had pretty awful wallpaper and a carpet that was simply disgusting (the sort you think is sucking at your feet when you walk over it).  Anyway, we got the carpets last week and that looked good.  After the failure of trying to paint over the existing wallpaper, I completely stripped it (using as little water as possible so as not to cause dampness problems as basements are notorious for damp) and repapered it.

The last time I put paper up was (I kid you not) about 35 years ago when I papered my very first flat (a tenement in Glasgow) in woodchip.   I remember it being a pain in the arse to do and resolving not to do it again; obviously a resolution I kept quite well.  But this time I used “paste the wall” paper and it was a bit of a revelation.  It is a hell of a lot easier manipulating the paper on to the wall and moving it about when it is not already all soggy and cumbersome with paste.  Also, this time I was using premium (1400g) lining paper which made it a bit easier to see what I was doing.  J provided some assistance by cutting the paper to size and handing it up to me.  I then primer coated it with Zinsser Plus primer painted before painting it buttercup white.

J told me a funny story the other day, which was that a lot of paint names sound like something out of a porn movie.  “Tender Cream”, “Lickable Lemon”, “Blush Lips”, “Bellend Purple” (the last one is not real).

Anyway the room got done and looks quite nice – even though it took much longer than I had initially envisioned.  Having said that, I now know much more about how to put wallpaper up than I did – it is generally so with this type of task – you feel as though you are getting the hang of it the moment it is nearly finished (just like life really).

So having completed this, I went to get an ice lolly out of the fridge.  All of a sudden there was the most monstrous cheeping and squeaking from outside.  A poor mother blackbird had built her nest in a tree in our garden right before we arrived with the Saphy menace, and she has been expressing her anxiety with alarm calls every time the cat put in an appearance.  But now the fledglings were emerging and Saphy had caught one.  She vanished with it behind a fence, but dropping the ice cream I managed to poke her away with the prop pole for the clothes line and R grabbed her.  The poor little bird had fluttered down to J’s basement door and I thought at first it was done for (in fact I was worrying about what we would do if it had survived but had a broken wing).  But luckily, it seemed quite lively – I picked it up, and carried it up to the top where its Mum was sitting on the railings doing her nut.  I put it on top of one of the bins, and a few minutes later, it flew away, seemingly unhurt.  That is one bird who’ll have something to tell its grandchildren.

So after that, Saphy was confined to barracks for the night.  And I ate my ice cream.

I didn’t take a photo of any of this so the featured image is of Amber hiding in my sock drawer.  She is the good one.