Strictly Come Loft Boarding

What an extraordinary length of time it is since we last spoke. And what amazing things have happened since then. Well...none, to be honest. But I am still around, still working, still dancing and still decorating. The latter task seems never ending. Wallpapering and painting our bedroom was straightforward enough, but the breakfast room...

The breakfast room had been smelling a bit musty, and I'd noticed a couple of dodgy floorboards. So, I took them up, only to be confronted by a set of floor joist bearers that were rotten and riddled with the result of over a hundred years' worth of woodworm. Over the next couple of weeks I spent a jolly time stripping out and replacing the bearers, treating them with anti-worm jollop and filling around twenty rubble bags with, erm, rubble. The stuff looked suspiciously like the leftovers of the bomb damage our house suffered in the last war, courtesy of the Luftwaffe. I also found that the skirting boards were rotten and knackered, and removing them dislodged huge amounts of wall plaster, which I had to pay a plasterer to fix. What had started as a bit of cosmetic work ended up as a mammoth (and expensive) task.

Then there was the laundry room. Stripped out, wallpapered, painted and fitted with new shelves, this at least was a reasonably quick fix. Mrs H was happy because she can, at last, set all the new sets of sheets and towels out. The sheets and towels we bought before we moved. Four years ago. And then it was time to move on to the next job; boarding out the loft. Not, as an American acquaintance thought, renting it out, but rather placing boards over the joists so I can use the area for storage. I will no doubt fill it with things that would be better taken to the rubbish dump. Why do I insist on keeping things that should be re-homed, or sent to landfill to fascinate a future generation of archaeologists when they eventually unearth them hundreds of years from now? Sometimes I wish I could live my life according to the code of the Buddhist monks. They manage with a razor, a needle, a begging bowl and a few other odds and sods. If you met a Buddhist monk in a supermarket you could bet your life you'd find him in the 'Five Items or Fewer' checkout queue.

There weren't many Buddhist monks in Willingdon church hall on Friday; just a bunch of morris dancers in mufti, attempting to get to grips with a dance called Bill Brewer, which is loosely based around the tune for Widecombe Fair. And quite a good dance it is, or will be once I've got the hang of it. Some morris dances demand a great deal of concentration and not a little technical skill; every bit as much as the contestants on Strictly Come Dancing have to deal with. I really do think that the BBC is missing a trick. I could see Strictly Come Morris Dancing working well as part of the Saturday evening schedule...