I should have kept on walking

Yesterday was a beautiful day, so instead of staying on the metro I decided to walk some of the way home. I passed Castorama and thought to myself: hey you know what? I’ll buy some frames for those lithographs I bought in Lyon and put up the Bali picture that has been sitting in front of the DVD player since August because it’s about 20 x 15 cm’s and the only wall left to put it on is metres long up and I’ll put up that saddle bag carpety type thing that I bought in Turkey specially for that big wall. I was so confident that this wee task of putting some pictures up would be quick that I didn’t even unpack my food shopping. Two and a half hours later I was screaming – out loud! And clasping my head and pulling my hair.

First off, I bought three frames when in actual fact I only needed two. No matter I thought I’ll stick up that picture I took by the Beauborg last year, I always kind of liked it. So I contorted myself under the bed to get my huge art folder out and pull out the last piece of backing card I have and mounted the photo and stuck it in the frame and then realised that the remaining two frames were slightly different colours but the one with the photo matched one of the others. OK I reframed the photo no problem. Then the lithographs were slightly too big for the frame. Again no problem, got the ruler out, measured, cut, framed and put them up in the bedroom. Then I unrolled the saddle bag carpety thing. Something instantly jarred in my head but I ignored it. I put up the photo and started to get the heavy duty picture hooks out and hammered them into the wall. Originally when I bought the carpet I thought I would want to hang the carpet thing horizontally. After hammering in three hooks I thought: mmm just move it back to the right that doesn’t look right. So of course the hooks no longer lined up. Never mind I thought, I’ll just hammer in one more hook, ignore the one that doesn’t line up and three should be enough. It was at that point that I actually decided that what if it was vertical instead of horizontal. Aah actually that looked much better. But that meant pulling the hooks out the wall, cutting off and re-sewing one of the rings, sewing the bottom pocket shut and OH MY LORD look at the huge chunks of plaster falling out as I pull out the hooks! So now I had to shove polyfilla in those holes. As I was sewing the ring on, it began to dawn on me that no matter what way I hung the bloody thing it just wasn’t going to look right in here. It didn’t go with the Moroccan carpet; it didn’t go with the lamp. It just didn’t go. It was about then I began to moan slightly. So, I hauled the thing into the bedroom and hung it, eventually, it was too high at first but by now I was expert at handling the pliers so that I didn’t bring half the wall down with me. But now I still had a blank wall and one incey wincey tiny Bali picture to go up on it. That may have been the first time I screamed. I moved Bali into the bedroom and put the lithographs up on the wall in the front room. I know I should have measured, but I was just so fed up. The second picture was too high, too low, finally. It’s a couple of millimetres off but do you know what? I NO LONGER CARE. I flung the pliers, hammer, picture hooks, ladder, polyfilla, ruler and scissors back into the cupboard and headed into the sanctuary of the bathroom hating EVERYTHING.

I wandered around the flat this morning getting my breakfast ready and well, it’s OK, I kind of like everything now, but I’m not putting those bloody shelves up above the table for a good long time.