Unfinishe...

?“If you talk 'bout the weather, you talk 'bout your shoes

You're longing forever to tell her the truth

So don't wait oh, go tell her now

Don't wait around

Or you may never know

You may never know how she's feeling

Know how she's feeling”

-???????Jonny Lattimer / Tom Odell?( Go Tell Her Now )

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There are several stories that I have started to write and never finished. A story I started 10 years ago was well received by the few people I shared it with, and oddly this, rather than encouraging me to continue with it, meant I stopped. The praise and encouragement I received seemed to tick a mental box for me, and I left it there.

I’ve written other stories in the meantime, all mercifully short, and all with a definite ending, and some people seem to have enjoyed them, and told me so, which gives me a buzz.

But I keep coming back to that original story.

It nags at me ,, ?in a way that I find unusual, as normally leaving things unfinished doesn’t bother me at all.

When my Soulmate and I bought our first home, in Clane, we decided that we would have wooden floors downstairs. The wooden floor people said to tell the builder not to put on the skirting boards as they would only have to remove them when putting in their wooden floor. I mentioned this to Lar, our builder and he said he’d leave uncut skirting boards in the house for the wooden floor people to put on when they installed the wooden floors.

When the house was ready the wooden floor people duly arrived and moved the uncut skirting boards out the back while they installed their beautiful wooden floors. A few days later I called out to see the house and admired the wooden floors, and then noticed that the wooden floor people had left the uncut skirting boards out the back.

“Not to worry” I said reassuringly to my Soulmate, “I’ll stick them on when we move in.”

Three months after we moved in my Soulmate asked when I was going to install the skirting borads.

“Very soon.” I replied.

The lack of skirting boards didn’t bother me in the slightest.

The lack of skirting boards bothered my Soulmate a lot.

Six months after we moved in I decided that while my Soulmate was at work I would indeed install the skirting boards. I went down to our local hardware store and bought a small saw, a measuring tape, a hammer, and three boxes of little tack nails.

When I brought the uncut skirting boards into the house I noticed that some of them were warped, but determined that a few extra nails would sort that out.

I spent the rest of the day measuring , sawing , and nailing the skirting boards into place. Corners were tricky, and I sometimes had to saw little extra bits to fill in wee gaps where I’d measured it a little short. I also underestimated how bendy the skirting boards had become , having been lovingly ignored out in the elements for the past six months. I had to go back to the hardware store and buy 5 more boxes of the tack nails, opting this time for slightly longer ones. The nice chap in the hardware store remembered me from earlier and asked if I’d lost the first few boxes of nails, and when I answered ‘No’ , he asked how many houses I was putting skirting boards into. He did his best not to laugh when I said one.

I went at the rest of the downstairs skirting boards with gusto, and was making great progress until I arrived at the fireplace. This required lots of sawing, cursing, tacking, and then more cursing. I used a whole box of nails on the fireplace skirting boards.

Eventually I was finished and sat down to admire my handiwork. Some of the early skirting boards seemed to have popped out the smaller tack nails, so I went round the whole of the downstairs skirting boards adding extra new longer nails just to be sure.

I decided not to sweep up the sawdust so that my Soulmate would know immediately on arriving home what a lucky girl she was , and what a practical manly man I was.

I collected her from work and let her go into the house first on her own. I thought I’d give her a moment or two to admire my handiwork before I arrived in to receive a mad , passionate kiss, with a promise of chips for tea.

I arrived in to see her on her hands and knees at the fireplace, making what, if I didn’t know better, was a sobbing sound. She turned and looked up at me. “I take it that you did this all on your own ?”

“Yes !” I answered , beaming proudly.

She smiled weakly. “You know that we have Barry and Karen coming over for dinner tonight ?”

“Yes. Looking forward to it.”

“I’ll light candles, don’t switch on the lights. Barry will have a field day if he notices these.”

I was shocked and a little hurt. I thought that she was judging my carpentry skills rather harshly.

Barry was in the house two minutes when he exclaimed “Who the fuck did that to your skirting boards ? Was it a blind, one armed man ?”

Everyone laughed. Except me.

I thought that they’d look alright once they were painted. A few weeks later my Soulmate asked when was I going to paint the skirting boards.

“Very soon.” I replied.

A few weeks after that our builder called round. I’d promised him a pair of Caterpillar boots for all his help with the house. They were still building more houses on the estate. I offered him a cup of coffee.

He sat on the sofa opposite the fireplace. He kept looking at the skirting boards, and eventually said “Did those wooden floor people do that ?”

Technically I didn’t say anything. I sort of nodded my head and made a ‘UMHUM’ sound into my coffee mug.

“The bastards ! I’ll send one of our lads around later to strip them off and put on new ones.”

And he did.

I never got round to painting them.

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A few years ago I delayed mowing our lawn for a number of weeks. Initially it was too wet, then I said it was a bee sanctuary…and eventually my Soulmate threatened divorce, so Elliott and I spent two days with two strimmers getting it back in check.

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These are just two illustrations of my lack of concern about things being left unfinished.

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And yet, this old story nags at me.

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I dug it out today for the first time in 5 years.

I wrote a new chapter.

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I may start finishing things.

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If you’re reading this in the weekly email , or on the blog, the first three chapters follow in the postscript. And if not , why haven’t you signed up yet ???

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Toodles,

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Paul