Six days. Part 3

Once more into the breach went I, and my stamina was definitely starting to get a bit ragged around the edges, but hey, in for a penny. I took Becky to work at seven in the morning on Saturday before taking on the M25 and A3 again, Wendy was waiting.
The good thing about the bosun’s store is that all I had to deal with was paint, very little corrosion was presenting itself. Thick peeling old paint cracks into large flakes under the needlegun and just pings off the steel quite quickly. The bad thing is the shape of the space. At the moment it’s a bit like a large curvy funnel with a bloody great propshaft at the bottom and there’s really not that much to stand on. So I became magnet boy for the day, managing determinedly to stick myself bodily to the walls in order to reach the high up stuff. That’s all good for about five minutes, but five hours later and bits of me had locked themselves into weird spasms and I found myself rapidly switching from top to bottom of the space and back in a desperate attempt to relieve the by now intolerable pain.

Sod the teabreaks, I just wanted it over with and had only allowed myself a day to do this on account of the fact that I knew I was truly knackered, to stay on to Sunday would be suicide. If I’d been fresh for it then yes, I could’ve slept over and finished it, but my wonky state told me there was no way I’d complete. Instead I chopped the job in half and made a decision to concentrate on what I deemed important, ie. The Hull. The deckheads would/will wait.

Funny to think this space will one day become our main bedroom. Looking at it after a long day behind the gun I realised that we’ve such a long, long way to go before we unfurl a patchwork quilt in here. At the moment it’s the most impossible choice of comfortable sleeping space but believe me (most of the time this fervent belief in the dream is the only thing that keeps us going) we’ll get there, it’ll only take several years.

And of course this isn’t even the end of those stinky needleguns. Because I had neither the time nor the superhuman energy and the bosun’s deckhead didn’t get done. There’s a possibility that my little airhammer might do this instead, but last night Becky brought attention to the fact that Wendy’s main deck (not the stuff Robin’s just cut off, the rest of it) still requires needle treatment, a fact I’d convieniently overlooked. Bugger. Therefore we’ve chalked the May bank holiday into the diary as most likely time to enjoy the noise and mayhem one more time. Oh excuse me while I wet myself with eagerness to use that bloody tool again… Why didn’t we buy a house like everyone else? Because it would just not be as good a test as all this. That’s why. And the walls’d be all straight and vertical. And I wouldn’t get to look forward to one day, one bloody day, living on the water.