I know that I’ve grey hair, wrinkles, a tendency to go to bed early and many more traits of those who will never see the uphill side of 40 again.  But those are just hints, aren’t they?  Does it matter that I spend my life driving a desk and enjoying a glass of wine (or 3) not working out in a gym or riding my bike?  No? surely not….

However, the last few days have proved otherwise.  Having taken delivery of many of the items required for the next tranche of work that is to be done at Les Terraces I was keen to get started on the project so that there’s less for Robin to do in January and – let’s be honest – because I want us to have done our bit too.  Since we began our move to Sainte-Foy-La-Grande we’ve done quite a lot ourselves and I now have a degree in IKEA – it’s the only advanced education I possess!  – so I had no qualms in tackling fitted wardrobes.  They’re not complicated.

Job one was to shift a bath-tub, 2 glass shower panels, a big shower tray, 2 heated towel rails, 8 wall panels, cases of tiles, rolls of lino, wet-room installation kits and much more so that there was sufficient space in which to work.  Then, with Graham’s help, I started on the wardrobe frames.  We soon had all four frames made and set roughly in place.  It was at this stage that the fact that the floor in the new dressing room tilts on 2 planes became clear.  There is about a 2″ difference in the floor from one end of the room to the other from fore to aft and about an inch the other way.  Making the wardrobes level was never going to be easy.  I went to bed liberally coated in Tiger Balm.  It didn’t help very much.

The following morning I could barely move.  Something had “pinged” in my back.  I was glad of the height of the bed – it made standing easier.  I stood under a hot shower for a long time and let the theraputic flow do its best for me and then applied Biofreeze (good stuff).  Now I was moving more easily and with less pain.  After breakfast we returned to the coal face and battled how best to level the wardrobes.  By lunch-time we thought we were getting there.  But it soon became clear that we were doing things entirely arse-about-face.  Back to square one.

At the end of the afternoon we’d all in place and (nearly) true, albeit it with quite a lot of huffing and puffing and a few choice and colourful epithets and as a very Heath Robinson affair, but it works.  All that remained was to anchor the wardrobe frames to the wall. ‘No worries!’  I hear you say.  Sadly, not the case…… the hole I’d knocked in the wall previously had revealed plaster 3″ thick (why??), so I leaped (ha ha) on my bike and went and bought anchors that might – just might – do the trick.  In hindsight, I probably ought to have drilled a test hole with a fine bit as then I’d have learned that there was a thin sheet of plasterboard followed by a void, followed by thin clay tile, followed by a void.  But I didn’t.  They’re mostly affixed to the wall now, but the rest will have to wait for a couple of days as this morning I was walking like someone of 90, not the south side of 50!