Real Life | 3 January 2019

1 January. Rooms left in house to decorate: 1 (only the attic, therefore doesn’t count).Walls plastered by self with no help from man: 1 (vg!!). Reconciliations with ex-builder boyfriend for the festive season owing to total collapse of self-belief right on cue at year end, notwithstanding evidence of self-sufficiency in newly plastered walls: 1 (must do better).

Am plastering genius, it turns out. After faffing about with something called a hawk to no particular avail, I ended up chucking all the tools on the floor in exasperation and plastering the dining room with my rubber-gloved hands.

It was a bit like baking, only instead of kneading dough in a bowl, I was kneading British Gypsum MultiFinish on to my walls.

The effect was stunning, unlike any plastering I have ever seen before, except perhaps on Grand Designs when those rich couples desert south Kensington for an eco-hipster encampment in Wales, where they build a roundhouse using only dung while camping with their five children in a tent for three years, then tell Kevin McCloud about the amazing ‘journey’ they have been on as grimy tears run down their newly toothless faces.