On Sunday I had a brainwave. I decided that today would be the day to start redecorating our bedroom. Together we’ve redecorated every room in the house since moving in. First was the lounge, which was green when we moved in. Bear in mind here that when we bought the house (our first home together) we had nothing, so we couldn’t exactly do everything at once. Anyway, we got rid of the green walls and the green carpet (which had a funny smell) and the 1960’s fireplace, plus the back-boiler, which was a real pain to move.
After doing the lounge it was onto the bathroom, the two spare bedrooms and then the kitchen and hall. However, the room we spend the most amount of time was still left as it was when we moved in. Emily had decided to see how “easily the wallpaper comes off” a few months back and we’d got huge tear marks in it as a consequence. However, Sunday morning came and I couldn’t deal with it any more. I just had to attack it somehow. That wallpaper was coming off and there was no stopping me.
Yes, I know.. weird. I don’t normally leap into DIY jobs with such enthusiasm, however I was without a laptop and it was driving me mad. Sure, I hadn’t put much thought into what was going to happen after I’d took the wallpaper off though. Well, let’s be honest.. I hadn’t put any thought into what would happen after I’d taken the wallpaper off.
Hours later and we’d finished… well, almost. The wallpaper was slightly harder to remove than it at first seemed. We did half the room and then it was “decided” (ahem!) that I’d take Tuesday and Wednesday off work to complete the job. Now – I know what you’re all saying here, “Why didn’t you leave it until next weekend”, well yes – however Em was determined to gloss, so I didn’t fancy moving our bed into the lounge for an entire week while we demolished the bedroom, so it had to be a special “DIY SOS”-style makeover. Y’know the sort – 48 hours and it’d be done.. in theory.
Tuesday was a typical day off for me. Whenever I do take a day off the same thing happens – I get ill. I go to all the trouble of booking a special day off, ensuring that someone at work can cover for me, then….. I get ill. I could’ve taken the day off sick, but oooohhhh no, I’ve taken it as a day out of my annual leave.
I knew. I knew the minute someone at work sneezed in my direction that I could taste something funny. Tuesday morning comes and my nose is streaming, I’m sneezing all over the place and, just to make things even better, I’m breathing in huge plooms of dust with the cheapest, loudest electric sander in the world. It made me wish I’d worn some kind of face mask.
Balls to it.. I was on a mission. I wanted to get this last room out of the way so nothing .. apart from our wedding.. would get in the way of me sitting down and drinking beer. The plan with this room was to wallop the walls, which is what I call “painting” as I’m frum the Black Countraaaayyy.
By Wednesday I’d got fairly used to listening to the radio. Em went out buying girly stuff for the room – curtains, polls, blinds, stuff like that. I was left alone painting the walls so I ended up listening to a lot of radio. We’ve got one of those DAB Digital Radios which was now buried under paint tins and dust sheets. The aerial on it is a bit wonky now but I’ve found that digital radio stations are, on the whole, pretty crap. They appear to fall into groups. You’ve got..
– Group A – Local FM stations that are now broadcasting on DAB too.
These are OK, pretty ordinary local stations like BRMB, where every DJ has to say, “There’s always a better song playing on BRMB”, every 3 minutes, else they’ll get sacked. After 10 minutes this annoyed the hell out of me due to the adverts.
– Group B – National FM stations that are now broadcasting on DAB too.
Virgin Radio, Radio 1 and the like. Usual stuff here. You don’t feel like listening to these because you think, “I can listen to these any time on a standard radio in the car!”
– Group C – DAB Only Stations
These, I must confess, range from the excellent to the utterly rubbish. Core Fresh Hits has to rank amongst the worst. If you listen to it for 15 minutes it’s fine. There’s never, ever, ever any adverts on (hell knows how they’re even in business) and the music seems to be good. However, if you listen to it for more than 15 minutes you’ll hear the same songs repeated again, and again, and again. At the moment they’ve got some “Little Brit Awards” being promoted, which is promoted literally every 5 minutes without fail. It’s so easy to spot a pattern..
….”Vote now” (song1) “Vote now for the Little Brit Awards” (song2) “Vote now, yeah!” (song 3) “Vote, go on!” (song 1 again)…
Add to that the DJ’s .. there’s about 3 of them, although the website says 5. Every day it seems to be some girl called Sophie, who says something every 10 tracks. Sure, there’s no adverts, no interruptions, but I’d like a bit more than Sophie saying, “Stay tuned for more fresh hits”, and then buggering off again for another 40 minutes. Where does she go ? I reckon, because the whole station appears to be owned by MusicRadio.com, she’s actually doing two shows at once. I think she’s running between the “Core Fresh Hits” studio and the studio for one of these other stations, because there’s literally nothing but music – played automatically by computer. What has she got to do ? Actually, I think I got a tad bored with all that painting and I’ve probably thought this through a little too much! Either way, with such a small playlist it’s easy to see why I turned off after 30 minutes.
In the end I switched to “Captital Life” which seemed to be repeating songs a lot less and played more variety.. again without any adverts. The DJ’s on this station didn’t really seem to know what they were saying though, with great words of wisdom like….
“That was a great one wasn’t it, I hope you were tapping your foot in the car.. err.. if you’ve got a DAB radio in your car, which .. err. I know a lot of people haven’t at the moment.. Hahhaha.. Of course you won’t be able to hear me if you haven’t so.. Yeah.. Hope you were tapping your foot.. Unless you’re in an area where you can’t get DAB… like the… north of Scotland or something.. aha… yeah.. OK. yeah.. Right..”
What the ?
Anyhow, Emily came back and managed to snap me out of “radio land” with a “small request”. Now, bear in mind that it’s 7.30 pm and I’m hungry, covered in dust, paint, dirt and I’m wet (the radiator pipe leaked.. long story). I need food, and I want to clean up now because I’ve had enough. However, it’s “decided” that “we” need to… put two curtain poles up, fit some blinds and go to Ikea.
Umm.. What now?
I don’t think so. That’s it – I was putting my foot down. That’s it. No way am I putting any curtain poles up, no way. Not a chance in hell.
..so I end up putting the curtain poles up. Luckily we never did go to Ikea, although last night I got home and found boxes upon boxes of Ikea stuff which we ended up putting together at some crazy hour of the morning. It’s now Friday and we’ve still not got our bed back in the room. Part of me wishes I hadn’t started all this now… :)