50+ and proud of it.

...after a certain amount of thought, skimming the whole ceiling and losing the Artexing lost its appeal somewhat. I gently broached the subject with the other half who "always has hated Artex". "Umm, how about if we get someone in to patch up the hole and blend in the pattern? That way we won't have to remove the entire contents of the lounge into the garage". I moved out of arms reach a little. "Yup, that's fine." That took me by surprise somewhat. "Ok, I'll 'yell.com' for Artexers near here. 'The next morning', as they say in Mills & Boon, Gary-the-I've-done-this-for-30-years-Artexer turns up armed with nothing but a keen eye and a pencil. "Yup, it's a professionally done pattern, I can match that no probs - you'll hardly notice it. What are you doing about the wall? I'm a plasterer too." "How much?", "2 days work", "You've got the job". "When can you s

Oh 'eck. Having been left with a hole-in-the-fireplace after the back boiler was taken out we thought it a good idea to get a log-burner (see previous posts...). Now, log burners are large(ish). They won't fit in the hole and look ok. So you make it 4" wider by removing the half-bricks at the side don't you? Sadly, after that the bits of wall now left look too small and the whole thing looks ridiculous. Hmm, have a think. "Do you think it would look better if we took the whole fireplace out", asks the wife. "Err, maybe..." Several hours later and several trips to the tip I removed the entire thing (about 400 bricks I estimate). I also had to vacuum the dust off both cats who refused to move from their normal morning sleeping positions on the sofa. This now leaves a bare concrete block wall and a hole in the ceiling. Call in the plasterer who needs to skim the entire wall and ceiling to get a decent finish... After three... 1, 2, 3 ...and so We had

At 14:13 on 15th Jan 09, PM6 made reel number 156000147 - its first roll of saleable paper. I, of course, nicked a small piece. After that things went downhill again, not through me tearing off a small piece, but further back up the line with "bad level" and etc. As of now (8 o'clock'ish) we've made 7 rolls of non-repulp (good) paper which you can of course buy at £1.42M each.

So there we have it. After 6 weeks and £40M the "we're definitely going to start selling paper on Monday" now seems like an embarrassing non-event. Paper Machine 6 (PM6) is warmed up, but not a sign of a scrap of WBF paper has come off the end. On the plus side, I did manage to get a scrap of paper from the very last ever white jumbo roll to come off the reeler...