Reality bites

My house is coming along slowly, this is not due to a lack of effort it’s just a sincere lack of time. I have one day at the weekend to work on my gaff the other being taken up with looking after my daughter. Working miles from home my evenings are limited to post 6pm starts, those starts being self-imposed hell after a day of work, a 6:12am start and two hours driving, still I’ve managed to force myself to do oodles of these knowing it is part of the precious little time I have available. Precious little as even my evenings are limited to two or three spells. Basically one evening I work late till nine at the college and as I like to see my little girl for one or two of the others there’s barely any evening slots to get on with the house. Once a fortnight though I try to take a day off in lieu from work, this is accumulated from my late evening of work and it can come in very handy.

What you have to remember too is that as I work solo on this project, my time is also invaded by cooking, washing, cleaning, bookwork, shopping, washing-up and all the other duties that come with running a household, I don’t have anyone I can turn to for a mid-painting burger and a cuppa. It’s all down to me.

The sacrifices you have to make aren’t immediately obvious too, you do imagine a few before you start, you have this predictive realism that makes you aware of potential disadvantages but there are many more than one can imagine, true reality bites.

My biggest bugbear is the limited amount of time I have to share with my little girl, to see her growing up every day would be a dream but hey the house doesn’t fix itself. There’s also the fact that you have absolutely no time to yourself, the only luxury are those times I do spent with my daughter, these moments can be limited to me being flat out in a chair snoring as she bounces on me trying to play princesses with me, hey but it’s all a bit tiring y’know and these snatched breaks have to be appreciated.

These drawbacks are all pretty obvious though, on top of these I’ve not been out for months, not a pub, not anything, the last time I went out was to a funeral, my Christmas and New Year were enjoyed at home with food and wine but that was it, no excursions. I permanently have bits of skin missing from my hands and my forearms look like over-ripe bananas. Sleep is a luxury, sleep in a nice bed is a dream. I’ve slept on floors, in the middle of what can only be described as a building site, on sofas etc. my current bed is a sofa bed in the smallest bedroom, this bedroom doubles as an office and is constantly in a state of chaos, but it is my home base. If it wasn’t for the electric blanket I got for Christmas and the loaner electric fire then I think the teeny bed and freezing room would have done for me ages ago.

The dust and the cold too, hmmm I’d say you get used to these but really you don’t. I taught myself to ignore the cold last year, but this year I’m finding it difficult to ignore jumping out of bed and dressing as quickly as I can in anything and everything I can find that might be warm. Getting out of a bath (in my heavenly green damp bathroom) into a room so cold that you’re just a steaming body in the middle of it does have its drawbacks, not least it’s blitheringly awful. Dust too gets everywhere, forget having nice things the dust even follows you to your car and taints that too, it’s just everywhere.

The sanity assassin too, that spark of patience you once had is now a distant memory after multiple bookings with tradespeople who don’t turn up, don’t communicate, do awful work, disappear and who’re just damned rude. I know I’ve had my fair share of great tradespeople but some just beggar belief that they ever get work.

Even TV, I might watch a bit of Football Focus over a hurried pie on a Saturday or a film at the end of hard day of decorating on a Friday evening, but during the week it’s impossible. If you get home and put on Eggheads, then that’s it, it’s “I’ll just watch a bit of The Simpsons and start a bit later” and before you know it you’re watching a documentary about the Hawker Tempest on the history channel washed down with some bigfoot hunting in the Cairngorms. You have to be careful.

Even the tiny luxury of having a night in with a bottle of wine in front of the box is now unrealistic. A bottle of wine makes Billy a less efficient working machine and the day following a bottle of vino tends to be a less efficient working day as one could normally squeeze out of this little bruised body of mine.

If you have a project then buyer beware, know what you’re about to do, know the pain you’re about to enter, get help, professional help.

However… in the words of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted

Maybe I like the misery

I love it all really – well most of it 🙂