The Farmer & His Wife

John Taylor tries his hand at hanging paper, and swears never again!

IT was October, a time when there always seems to be too much work to cope with on our farm. Coming in at eight in the evening, I was nearly too tired to eat the meal Anne laid before me.

At half past nine we retired to bed, and I was asleep within minutes. I was awakened by the digging of an elbow in my chest.

“John, wake up! Look at that crack in the ceiling

– it wasn’t there yesterday.”

If ever I felt like committing murder, it was then. Fancy waking up your husband, who had been toiling from dawn to dusk, to point out a crack in the ceiling of a very old farmhouse!

The crack didn’t worry me, but Anne was anxious to have the house looking smart before our usual batch of relatives arrived to stay for Christmas. I’d get no peace until the problem had been solved.

“Why not paper it, dear?” I suggested. “I’ll help.”

As soon as I’d made this rash offer I could have bitten my tongue off.

A few days later Anne was poring over books of wallpaper patterns. The following Tuesday I was instructed to buy the paper.

“I suggest you play for safety and take five rolls,” the lady in the shop advised.

That night, Anne mixed a bucket of flour and water paste. I took an old table up into the bedroom and six chairs. Anne said paperhangers always went the long way of a room, so we strung the chairs out that way.

Have you ever tried to hold up 14 feet of wet wallpaper?

Anne held one end while I climbed a chair in the corner. By jumping from chair to chair, we got the first piece across the ceiling, but it was four inches off the wall at the far end. How were we to know the wall wasn’t straight?

We pulled it off and tried again – same result.

“Perhaps we should have done it the narrow way,” Anne said.

The following day, I called into the shop and asked the young lady to send out a paper-hanger.

Every man to his trade, and mine will never be papering a ceiling. ■ More next week