Under Protest

A sideways look at age, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Humour 2 Minutes
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Under protest, I have started to decorate the kitchen.  It is never going to be anything other than ‘under protest’ because it is a job I both loathe and am fundamentally unqualified to do.  I do, as I do with all things, my very best, but I am painfully aware that, as with most things, my very best is woefully inadequate.  It is like one of those dreams where you suddenly find yourself expected to do brain surgery, with a gowned-up nurse looming over you and saying, “Well you’ve got all the right tools.  What’s your problem?”  It is not the knowing that I am incapable of successfully carrying out the task, it is more the knowledge that the patient will never recover, will start wearing woolly hats indoors and talking like Minnie Mouse.  It is the knowledge that once I have had my go, not even the most brilliant of qualified practitioners will ever be able to put things right.  I think that I might be ok if ‘slow and methodical’ was allowed, but it isn’t.  This is the kitchen: ‘yesterday’ is what is required.  No mess, no delay, ready to cook dinner is what is required.

The kitchen is the hub of our house: it has 5 doors, 2 windows, dozens of wall and floor cabinets and more sockets and switches than the average electrical retailer.  It has white units for God’s sake!  Masking up is a time-consuming and ultimately futile task: it does not matter how expensive the tape, nor how carefully I apply it, paint always leaches under it like a splash of black coffee on a mushroom shagpile, covering a far greater acreage than it is physically possible to achieve.  All adjoining areas look as if they have been painted by J.M.W Turner.  Removing the various electrical gewgaws instead is not an option.  I have no desire to bounce of the ceiling – again – simply because I do not know my black from my red, nor my off from on.  I cannot afford the dental bills consequent upon agonized gnashing.

And I dare not dare to even think about all the add-ons: all the things that are made to look tawdry by the sparkling new walls; all the things that need updating because they are now the wrong colour; all the things that need replacing because I have broken them, inadvertently painted them or lost them. 

Now, it is my purpose I feel, in this life and this blog, to look for the positives.  Well, I’m looking…

My wife (bless her) is, as ever, full of helpful advice so, should it – as it almost certainly will – all go tits-up, she will be in the perfect position to fill me in very quickly on where I went wrong, how stupid I have been and how much better everything would be if only I would listen.  I will try to explain that if she had just listened to me, I wouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but it will not work and I will face my usual two options: down tools or start again.  Under protest, I will start again…

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Published by colinmcqueen

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37 thoughts on “Under Protest”

    2. Moving with the same wife might mean same things after 3 years. May be you should arrange for a house-scotch (as in hop-scotching houses). So, you move before your wife can ask you to get it painted…

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      6. Thank you, my dad used to get transferred a lot during his work days. We house-scotched every three years. My dad never painted the kitchen! He did other things of course–tried to fix the cooler, pipes, toaster and other stuff husbands should never be allowed to touch!

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  7. No husband can ever be a good painter because it is scientifically proven that loads of men are often colour blind to a certain extent. They can’t recognise the difference between maroon, magenta, violet, purple, wine, mauve and lavender… No husband ever knows how to hold the brush right–never having applied oil in a pan for bacon, nor have applied eye liner, lipstick or blush… No wonder your wife does not trust you to listen to her, since a husband’s mind is always on the next meal and never on how it is made in pans they had just dropped colour on…

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      1. My husband asks me about “that brown suit” which is maroon, “that red suit” which is brick colour, “that pink suit” which is mauve, and “that blue suit” which is sea green. Then he blames me that I don’t remember the clothes I own! 🤣

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