THE QUACK

AUDIO QUACK. Let me read for you! Skip Introduction: 1:37

A couple of years ago, I was inspired by Pinterest to paint a dark green statement wall in my bathroom. One evening, I got out my paintbrush, put on an audiobook (Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife) and changed my white bathroom to a green one.

By 1 am, I was sleepy and sloppy, so when I stepped back to admire my work, I found it to be a bit…’splatty.’ 

I lived with my ‘splatty’ bathroom for a while before I realised I couldn’t bear the sight of it. Whenever I tried to relax in my bubble bath, the green splodges on the skirting boards would catch my eye. It also didn’t help that whenever Mum came to visit, she would give her criticism, which would be artfully disguised as a throwaway comment. 

“A light terracotta would work in here.”

“But I just painted it green.”

“Oh yeah….”

“You don’t like the green, do you?”

Her pitch would go up. “No. No. I do like the green. The green is nice.”

I would usually do the sensible thing and ignore my Mum, but Mum, unfortunately, knows what she is talking about. It’s her thing. She’s been the interior designer for a pub, a townhouse, a holiday home, a ski chalet… She can list the names of Farrow & Ball paints as if they were her nephews and nieces. 

“I see some Elephant’s Breath on that skirting board.”  

“This alcove needs to be Broccoli Brown!”

“Make it Cooking Apple Green!”

Growing up, Mum was always doing something to the home. When her first child, Jack, was born, she painted the skyline of our local town Didcot on his walls. For the first year of his life, he slept next to an illustration of the power station.

One of my earliest memories was watching Mum paint the lounge a dark plum. I stood by her and sprayed a bit of polish on the wall because I wanted it to sparkle. That was when I learnt you do not polish walls, especially freshly painted ones.  

Mum saw the house as her canvas. There wasn’t Pinterest back then, but magazine cutouts and paint samples were always piled on the kitchen table.  It was exciting living in a home that was constantly changing. One day the hallway was yellow, the next it was white. One day there was a wall, the next there wasn’t a wall. 

My favourite time was the summer when Dad had his 40^th birthday party. The kitchen was being gutted out, so to make it look less like a building site, fish, flowers and shapes were painted across the walls. At 8 years old, I was living in a real-life fairy house. 

There was a constant smell of paint and the noise of a builder’s crackling radio. White dirty cloths would cover floors. Sometimes, there would be no floors at all, just beams that made for an excellent obstacle course.  Dusty men would congregate in the kitchen for tea breaks with their paint-splattered trousers and shell-dry knuckles. 

One of the first loves of my life was a blonde plasterer named Luke. I was six—he was sixteen. To the enjoyment of the other tradesmen, I followed Luke around until my Mum rescued him.

“Leave Luke alone,” she said, dragging me away. 

“But I love him….”

There were tradesmen who would come and go, like Luke (who was scared away), and then there were more consistent ones. 

In Year 1, I was tasked to draw my family. So, I did.  I drew Me, Joe, Jack, Dad, and Mum. Next to Mum, I drew two other men, one bald and the other with dark scribble for hair and a beard. When the teacher came round to check the work, her eyes widened. 

“Who are the other two men, Mary?” she asked carefully. 

“That’s Andy, he does the lights. And that’s Lorenzo, he does the bricks.”

Fast forward to my thirties, and I’m standing in my green bathroom on a video call to Mum, asking what colour she thinks would be best. 

“Yes, I think that very light terracotta would work well. Setting Plaster is its name,” she said as I moved the phone around the room. “And what are you going to do about that cabinet on the wall?”

“You don’t like the cabinet, do you?”

“No. No. I do like the cabinet. The cabinet is nice…”

So, before I painted, I risked my life by unscrewing the bathroom cabinet and balancing on the toilet lid as I removed it from the wall. 

Then, it was time to call for help from the Dom of Painting – Hermione. (Whip sound).

 

Hermione is often dragged in by friends to help with painting, because she does the job with her teacher’s head on. I hesitated to press send on the text asking for help, knowing what it would entail, but it had to be done. 

She arrived at my door with brushes and tape. Mountains of tape…

As expected, she had zero tolerance for slackness. She stood over me, inspecting my tape work. 

“It needs to be at the edge! This is why you had splatty walls!” She peeled it off and re-stuck it again. After she was satisfied that all the tape was correct, we were finally allowed to paint. 

We did it in one afternoon, and then, because I didn’t have a boyfriend, I used her boyfriend, Sam, to put up the shelves. He sat like a toddler in the hallway, organising the screws and plastic things as Hermione and I had coffee on the sofa. He was done in no time, and I had shelves where the old cabinet used to be. 

Hermione was happy because she very much liked seeing Sam doing DIY. And Sam was happy that she was happy. And I was happy because now I could show Mum my new bathroom. 

I put her on a video call. 

“Better. So much better. I’m loving the Setting Plaster. And the door, it looks like that Railing colour.”

“It is Mum!”

“Looks beautiful!” she said. I sighed with relief. My bathroom had my Mum’s approval. But suddenly, she said, “What about one of those stand-alone baths?”

“You don’t like my bath, do you?

“No. No. I do like your bath. Your bath is nice…”