Who's the Daddy: Painting over a painful past

Like every married man in the world I could happily spend every day off work sitting on the sofa watching mindless sport – preferably football.
Who is the DaddyWho is the Daddy
Who is the Daddy

For someone whose job it is to work on newspaper pages until they’re as perfect as I can get ‘em, I’m astoundingly cack-handed when it comes to doing jobs around the house.

Painting and decorating is the worst.

Unless you want your carpet covered in emulsion, blobs of wallpaper paste the size of snowballs dripping down the walls and a masterclass in angry swearing, don’t ask.

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There are many reasons I married the boss 23 years ago. Her skills with a paintbrush made the top 10. Not only is she good at it, she actually likes it. You and I may well spend our precious days off gawping at the TV, turning our internal organs to mush at a spin class and napping, the boss likes nothing better than stripping ceilings.

Opposites attract, I suppose. But when she’s off work then no painted or papered surface is safe. I came home from walking the dog last week (only out for an hour) to find the hallway and landing stripped bare.

I thought it was only decorated last year, but messages scrawled on the bare walls by our then 11-year-old daughter #2 revealed it was February 17, 2014. Good grief, the world has changed beyond all recognition since then. So much so that seven-and-a-half years ago feels like some sort of golden age compared to the fire-in-a-bin times we live in today. In no particular order… Brexit, Trump, Covid, Boris Johnson and Liverpool winning the Premier League and European Cup.

All unimaginable back in the winter of 2014, but all cataclysmic events we’ve had to endure in the space of a few short years.

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Apart from declaring war on China and Russia and the inevitable nuclear holocaust that would bring, there’s nothing else that can be as bad as all that, is there?

It makes you think, what will have happened by the time the boss’ latest DIY handiwork is replaced, at the current rate that’ll be mid-February 2028. Who on earth will be in charge of the country by then? My money’s on Gary Neville, with Roy Keane as Home Secretary.