Identity crisis

With the threat of Identity cards looming, the subject of identity and how to prove it is big news here in the UK at the moment. We have in recent years had to jump through extraordinary hoops, for instance, to open new bank accounts because anti-money laundering legislation now requires proof that you are who you say you are, and live where you say you live, before the account is set up.

So it was with some surprise I learned recently that a friend who is getting married this year has been able to apply for a passport in her married name, and has actually had the passport issued, several months before the ceremony is due to take place.

Naturally I hope things go well for her and that her and her partner enjoy a long and happy married life, but the simple fact is she is now in possession of a legal document for someone who effectively doesn't yet exist. What would happen if, between now and then, the wedding is called off? Would anyone check the validity of the passport if the wedding didn't take place? I very much doubt it. Passports tend to be taken at face value, and this attitude to the validity of such an important document as a passport, widely seen as a lynchpin of someone's legal identity, is only legitimate if the checks that are made before issue are completely watertight.

The last time I got married, my new wife travelled on her original passport in her maiden name and we took the marriage certificate with us. She was only able to exchange her old passport for one in her married name by submitting both the original and the wedding certificate to the passport office, thus proving that the marriage had already occurred.

This new approach, undoubtedly instigated in an attempt to be helpful and "citizen-centric," appears to be open to unwitting or deliberate abuse in those cases where the expected marriage doesn't happen (or indeed, in nefarious cases, was never intended to happen).

Going "home"

I took my girls home tonight. It's been great having them here since Boxing Day - a much longer time than we usually get to spend with them, and even when we don't do much more than eat, talk and watch TV, it's still wonderful to be able to spend time with them and just be "normal."

But however long they stay, there always comes that time when I have to take them "home." The trips back to Yorkshire are totally different from the journeys to Manchester. When I pick them up, we all have news of what's happened since we last saw each other, school events, social events, how we're all getting along with various projects. We hardly stop talking until the moment we pull up outside the house.

On the way back? Mostly silence. We usually kill the emptiness by listening to some music (this time round, Black Holes and Revelations by Muse) but there's very rarely any conversation. I can't speak for them, but for me this is largely because I'm feeling a bit down knowing that I won't be seeing them again for a while - usually two weeks - and that I'm gonna miss them. The house always seems so quiet when I get back and they're not here.

Have you read The Bible?

We were all watching a celebrity edition of The Weakest Link this evening when the question came up "who betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver?" to which I immediately responded "Judas."

After a few minutes, Blythe asked me if I'd read the Bible. I said no (although in my teens I did give it a go. I never got past the middle of Genesis - all that x begat y and y begat z and people living to the age of 900 kind of put me off) and asked her why she'd asked.

"Well you knew the answer to that Judas question," she replied.

No bad reflection on my younger daughter, but she's thirteen and growing up in what ostensibly is a Christian country. I've never considered myself a devout Christian or a bible-basher, but I knew the story of Judas by the time I was eight, purely because of the teaching I was exposed to in what was then an average junior school. Now, my daughters have both studied all sorts of alternative religions as part of their "religious education" - Hindu, Buddhist, Islam, Shinto - and I honestly believe this is a good thing. The less ignorance there is about other people's beliefs the easier it is for everyone to rub along together (IMO). But why should that be an excuse not to teach about Christianity, especially when that is the mainstream religion of Britain? I'm no Christian fundamentalist, but it seems to me that such woeful ignorance of even the most basic stories from scripture loosens the bonds of our culture and can only be a Bad Thing.

This is an old story - many newspaper headlines from the past year and before tell it - but why must we be so apologetic about having, preaching and teaching a religion in Britain? All around, Christian symbols are being taken down, greetings at this time of year are watered down to "Happy Holidays" instead of "Happy Christmas" and the number of cards on sale with nativity or religious scenes reduces year by year, all for the sake of avoiding "offence" to other religions.

Hang on - I'm not offended if someone wishes me "Happy Hannukah" or a colleague at work brings in a box of chocolates so we can all celebrate Diwali. And of all my many friends, colleagues and acquaintances, whose various faiths are numerous, none of them are offended by me wishing them Happy Christmas. Why would they be?

First fire

Owing to a trauma suffered as a teenager, Nikki has never been very keen on open fires. I should rephrase that: she's actively avoided having one. But our new home has four fireplaces, three of which are open and one - in the study - which has a wood burning stove. So it was inevitable that at some stage during the winter, I was going to want to put a fire in.

And what better time to do that than when we're all at home intending to enjoy a quiet day watching "Christmas telly" - i.e. old movies, DVDs and catching up with stuff that's been languishing on the PVR since the summer? So off I trudged to the wood store and filled my bucket. I'd not been certain of being able to persuade Nikki that this was a good idea, so I wasn't prepared with firelighters or quantities of kindling. I did have a couple of old newspapers lying around though, and soon had a small fire set with twigs, bits of broken door and (very) small logs.

Within a few minutes, we had our very first fire and in true "real fire" style it looked a lot warmer than it actually was. Even so I still think it's true that you can't beat real flame. We turned the lights down low, snuggled up on the sofas, put Pixar's "Cars" on the DVD player, turned on the demo surround sound system and settled down for a cozy afternoon's viewing (interrupted only by three further trips to the wood store - I'll have to get a bigger bucket!).

I wimped out mid-evening. It had started to rain around 4 o'clock and I'd already made one damp trip for more wood through the downpour. Faced with a combination of torrential rain and darkness I decided to let the fire die out, which it did around 8. Lovely while it lasted though, and with a fine mesh fireguard in place, Nikki learned to love it too :o)

Christmas at the Azad Manzil

Last Christmas Day, we took Mum and our good friend Annie out for a Christmas curry to the Azad Manzil. The food was fabulous and the place was rammed, with a 'party' atmosphere to die for - everyone wishing everyone else a Happy Christmas - so we really enjoyed the experience and had originally intended doing the same this year. That was, until we'd been in our new home about a month and I began to feel that for the first Christmas here I'd prefer a traditional meal around our own dining table.

Having bought a massive turkey crown, our plans were royally thwarted when the oven packed in last Thursday. We'd cooked a perfect pizza the night before, when suddenly the oven decided it would leave its burner languishing at a height of half an inch and never rise above a temperature of 250°

So it was back to plan A, and we booked in at the Azad Manzil.

The first change we noticed was the menu. A choice of only one traditional or one curry meal, either of which had to be booked in advance. I've been a dedicated curry eater for over 30 years and I'd never heard of the dish on offer as "Meal B" - a chicken Kurzi - but we ordered two of those and two traditionals. The second difference was that they wouldn't let us book in for two o'clock: they were only catering for one sitting, which was at 3pm. Both of these changes, while perfectly understandable from a catering point of view and not being especially disappointing, did put a slight damper on our expectations.

We were right to be concerned. We arrived shortly after 3pm to find only two other tables occupied. Half an hour later when the "single sitting" began to be served, no more than six tables were taken and the atmosphere was more like a graveyard than a celebration. Service was quite slow and perfunctory (in complete contrast to the jovial atmosphere of last year) and although the Kurzi - which turned out to be a tandoori chicken covered with something like a curried bolognese sauce - was pleasant, it would never have been my first choice. To top it all, the Rasmalai promised on the menu (my favourite Indian dessert) was never offered, and Gulab Jamin (which I hate) were substituted without a word.

We left feeling completely let down and I doubt very much whether we'll be back for a third visit next year (oven willing!).

Entertaining Mother

Christmas Eve, and for the fifth year running I set off early to pick up my Mum. She spends three days with us, and normally enjoys the change, but after a year of failing health I was expecting this year to be more of an ordeal for her. Looking on the bright side, it would have been worse had we still been at the old house, which had many more stairs to negotiate. With deteriorating hip joints and muscle wastage in one leg, she finds stairs increasingly difficult and had at one point declared that she would sleep on a sofa because she wouldn't be able to get upstairs.

Having assembled the portable pharmacy she needs to carry with her these days, we set off back home just after 11am. The roads had been relatively quiet on the way down, but by this time everyone had woken up to the fact of it being the last shopping day, and the journey through Stockport was very slow.

The journey from Nottingham takes about two hours so we arrived at the predicted time and gave Mum the ground floor tour, leaving the upper floors until my cousin and her husband arrived. I needn't have worried quite so much about the stairs - turns out in the last couple of days Mum has improved slightly and developed a way of getting up that is slow but effective.

Trish and Rob stayed for tea and sandwiches and headed off around 6pm leaving us with the evening telly. There was a time, and I'm sure this is not a rose-tinted memory, when our whole family could sit and watch TV quite happily together. Maybe the lack of choice back then (when I left the parental home there were only three channels available) forced us to be less discerning and/or more easily satisfied, or perhaps it's a complex combination of factors, but I find it almost impossible to watch in the company of my mother for any length of time. So much has changed since those days of my adolescence. Back then television was our main form of entertainment. Now, while my Mum remains glued to the same narrow spectrum of programs (soaps and crime dramas such as Poirot and Morse), we barely watch an hour's TV per night, preferring instead to spend time online, playing games, reading, or with friends.

Even when our telly habits overlap - as with soaps - it's not always a good match. We watch EastEnders; she doesn't. She watches Emmerdale; we don't. And our attitudes to the storylines couldn't be more polarised. David Platt's exposure of grandma Audrey's affair with Bill Webster, for instance, which took place over the family meal on Christmas Day in front of Bill's wife was greeted by us with cries of "Excellent!" and howls of laughter. My Mum sat stony-faced and muttered: "He needs a damned good hiding."

And once the soaps are over for the night, there is very little we can find that will satisfy our mutual viewing needs. Mum's lived on her own for 13 years now, and is used to having sole charge of the remote. Since we're not prepared to sit in front of endless rehashes of Midsomer Murders or The Inspector Linley Mysteries, whatever we choose to watch is punctuated by regular tuts or exasperated exhalations from Mum's corner of the room followed shortly with "I think I'll go to bed, John." No, it's never relaxing watching TV in the company of the aged P, but in some strange way it has come to represent the distillation of 21st century Christmases.

Mulled wine, mates and home cinema

What a weekend this has been! New friends and old friends in abundance and although not the official housewarming, our new home now feels even warmer and more friendly than it did before.

We learned from the previous owners that they had held a mulled wine evening somewhere close to Christmas for the last five years. Right from the off we were very keen to uphold this local tradition. There was a momentary hiccup while we debated with some other neighbours who should hold it, because we'd been told they had expressed an interest in doing it this year. Having spoken with them, it turned out this was only a backstop in case "the new people" didn't want to do it. As soon as we convinced them we really wanted to have the party here, they more or less insisted we do it.

With most of the house still to some extent in a mess, we had to leave it until the last possible weekend before Christmas to organise it, so eventually the date was set for Friday 15th and invites went out. We had one decline (previous engagement) and no other replies, so we didn't have any idea what to expect - but the last thing we anticipated was the arrival, on the dot, of the person who said she couldn't make it. "Hubby's been delayed at work, so I thought I'd just pop over and show my face," she laughed, and was joined a few minutes later by another neighbour in a similar situation. Both she and her husband were off to different works' dos but she wanted to support the event and stayed for a glass of wine.

We learned from the first that she was still getting "funny mail" having been here more than ten years (not sure whether that was a comfort or not!) and from the second that her kitchen man had managed to install her entire kitchen for less than a quarter of what we were quoted. A useful man to know!

After slightly overstaying their declared thirty minutes, both these ladies made their apologies and left, and Nikki and I stood in perfect pre-party gloom, alone with our cups of mulled wine wondering whether anyone else was going to turn up. We needn't have worried: during the next hour more-or-less the whole street turned up, and the wine, cheese and excellent conversation flowed well into the night. The "second era" of mulled wine parties was well and truly ushered in that night and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

The following day we were up early again and preparing to welcome all my mates from Nottingham for the weekend. After the successes of the Great Orme weekend and the 50th birthday celebrations we were determined to keep up the pace of get-togethers since there'd been a bit of a cultural desert in the middle of the year. We just managed to squeeze this date in before Christmas and it was the first time anyone had seen the new place.

Once everyone had arrived, had a brew and been given the 50c tour, we caught the bus into town to take in the Christmas markets. Not surprisingly (this was the markets' last weekend of trading) they were all rammed, but we had a good look around and then repaired to Sinclairs Oyster Bar for a very welcome couple of pints. We timed it perfectly - hitting the upstairs while there was still one table free and space at the bar. Within 15 minutes of our arrival it was standing room only and three deep at the bar!

Walking back up Market Street, we caught the bus from Piccadilly and on arrival home sat those who were fans down in front of Strictly Come Dancing while we prepared a chilli. It was a squeeze fitting eight around our dining table, but SO great to have everyone there enjoying the meal, laughing and joking. For me, at that moment, the spirit of Christmas crystallised. There is surely nothing better than welcoming your oldest friends and their partners into your home and sharing a wonderful meal together.

There then followed a shift change in front of the TV as the Strictly Come Dancing fans made way for the X Factor fans and we watched the final, with (naturally) rather more piss-taking than normal service would have expected. Pretty soon after we were all showing our age - various nodding heads paying homage to the lateness of the hour, the full bellies and the quantity of quaffage, so we declared an end to proceedings and went to our various beds.

Sunday morning dawned bright and bleary and with a traditional breakfast of bacon baps tucked away, the mates departed each to their own destinations. For while I still refer to them all as "my Nottingham mates" the truth is they only originated in Nottingham. Nowadays only two of our group live there (and one had not come for the weekend). The rest of us are more widely dispersed but still answer to the title "Nottingham mates" and ever mote it be.

The excitement of the weekend was not yet over, however: a further surprise was yet to come in the form of Annie offering us an option of a second-hand home-cinema-surround-sound system she'd been hawking around on behalf of another friend. Scarcely pausing to draw breath she was upon us, wiring up a demo (sans sub woofer) and insinuating the delights of surround sound under our skins to the point where we could hardly refuse the deal. Like I said at the beginning: WHAT a weekend!

It's *your* responsibility

One of the most apparently innocuous aspects of the weekly grocery shop is something I find really irritating and makes me keenly aware on a regular basis what a topsy-turvy world we've created for ourselves.

It's the warning on the travelator between the ground and first floor levels at Asda Trafford.

A model of high technology, Asda have installed detectors at the top and bottom of each travelator and, when anyone comes within range, the detectors initiate a recorded woman's voice saying "Approaching landing level; please take care." The detectors are finely tuned and can distinguish people standing only a few inches apart. The message is played for each person detected and when walking around that end of the store there is an almost constant background noise of "Approaching landing level; please take care...Approaching landing level; please take care...Approaching landing level; please take care."

How much money it cost to install I have no idea, but Asda clearly believed it was money well spent to ensure that not only had they done everything possible to avoid a customer falling off the end of the moving walkway and suing them for negligence, but also each individual customer would, as far as possible, hear their own personal message. But negligence? Like it's not their own responsibility, having stepped onto the device, to maintain sufficient awareness of where they are to know when the end is nigh.

Not so very long ago, it would have been sufficient to install a (silent!) sign saying something like "end of travelator approaching - face forward." Indeed airports still seem to manage perfectly well with this simple measure - I have not yet heard a verbal warning in an airport and I hope I never do. And of course, before the advent of such signs we had something called "common sense" which imbued everyone with the ability to face the right way, watch out for the end of an escalator or travelator, and step off it on their own like real grown up people. What's more, if they tripped up off the end, they would most likely have thought "stupid me," got up and walked on.

In recent years we've heard a lot about "human rights" but not much about human responsibilities. Like taking responsibility for your own actions and not looking for someone else to blame when something happens to you that you should have foreseen, or could have avoided with a bit of thought. I despair sometimes, wondering how today's kids will survive growing up in a "warning environment" where they are never expected to fend, or even think, for themselves. Where they learn to expect to be told what to do at every step of every process. Like when the landing level is approaching.

Spare room decorating: Finished!

Today was a day for finishing things. The boiler refit was completed and the boiler commissioned by about 6pm, after a freezing day at home with both front and back doors open all day. In the end I shut myself in the study with only an oil heater for company but at least I was warm enough for my fingers to move over the keyboard.

With the painting complete (including retouching where the "low touch" masking tape had pulled off paint - and sometimes paper - from the edges of the peachy walls) we could move the furniture back in to spare bedroom and rehang the curtains. OK, being the original curtains they don't exactly match the rest of the room anymore, but they'll do for now. And the room needs a light fitting (one I've saved from several houses ago which has been looking for a home for almost 20 years) and some small bedside tables and a small dresser, and we haven't yet decided what to do about all the stripped doors in the house, but hey - it's decorated!)

Lunchtime was taken up with completing the assembly of the wardrobe. I reckon this has taken about nine hours to put together, but the end result looks great and we can finally take the rest of our clothes out of boxes and portable wardrobes exactly two months after moving in!

Finally, we erected and decorated the new Christmas tree. With so many cracks between floorboards we decided a long time ago that we'd give up having a real tree. We both love them but they're a pain to fetch, you can never find exactly the right shape and getting rid of them afterwards is more pain, so artificial it is. Still looks nice though and it fits the hall perfectly.

Spare room decorating: Day 8

Another day working at home (in this case because I had to be here to let the heating engineers in - we're having the old boiler ripped out and a fab new combi boiler installed) so the second coat of copper on that fourth wall was my lunchtime task again for today.

Since we're without heating tonight (old boiler has gone; new boiler not yet connected) we kept warm by carrying on with the assembly of the wardrobe. Completed the two-door section and the complete carcase of the single-door section. These imports are very well put together, but as always the instructions are not quite up to the mark. For instance - the picture shows that the strengthening blocks at the four corners at the back have to be screwed in at stage 4, so when you come to bolt the two sections of wardrobe together at stage 12, you can't get two of the bolts in because the blocks are in the way! Doh!

Oh, and we figured out where those two weird feet go on the bed. With it being a super king (6-foot) bed, the central support strut carrying the slats needs those two feet screwing to it to hold it up. And the rest of the screws? They're for the slats themselves - three each side - so they don't slide about under the mattress. That would have taken just one picture - come on guys!

Spare room decorating: Day 7

Since I've now run out of holiday and had to go back to work, progress has slowed to a crawl but luckily I can work at home today and with only one wall left to paint I can get the first coat on in my lunch hour. This is the feature wall, so it's copper.

Spare room decorating: Day 6

Last day of the holiday and as I applied the second coat of peach to the three walls it was clear I wouldn't be finishing the room in the allotted time - that ceiling had set me back a day and I never recovered it. I have to wait until the peach is properly dry before I mask off around the edges of the fourth wall, so that will have to wait.

The painting didn't take too long, so I was soon on to the next task of the day - assembling the three-door wardrobe that was delivered yesterday. Most of the furniture was delivered already assembled, but the wardrobe had arrived in five separate packages and it wasn't until I opened the fifth package that I found the instructions! A small panic there! It was obvious from the off that this isn't a one-person job and what's more, it's going to take more than one evening, but I managed to get the first two-thirds of the carcase together so at least it would stand up on its own.

The Christmas do

A day off from decorating! After five solid days I was ready for it, and yesterday was the day of Nikki's work's Christmas do at Moorside Grange. The celebrations started early - too early to do any decorating as we had to be there between 2 and 3pm for post-check-in drinks.

After checking in and dumping our bags we joined the other early birds for a couple of beers in the bar. I'd had a feeling of déja vu since learning where this place was, and turning into the lane it's on I'd finally remembered it as the place I'd spent a rather unhappy two days at a business conference almost seven years earlier. I think it might have been called something else back then.

Early drinks over we escaped to our room to shower and prepare for the evening's "entertainment" - which consisted of more drinks in the bar (including cocktails) and then being frogmarched into the Pennine suite banqueting hall with about 180 other unfortunates. It was bloody freezing in there but before long we were served our gruel to mark the start of the meal. Now I know "Christmas party" catering has an apocryphal bad name but this reached new depths. I wonder whose job it was to count the sprouts onto the plates, because we all had exactly four baby sprouts, along with two slivers of carrot, four small balls of something that resembled roast potato, two slices of turkey breast and a very small pig in a threadbare blanket. In my case this was followed by one of those individual cheesecakes that you only get at mass catering dos - looks like a small gasometer and tastes like shaving foam.

With only a disco to look forward to after that, and neither of us fancying our chances on the postage stamp dance floor we beat a retreat as soon as it was politely possible and crashed out in the (passably comfortable) room, only to be woken at 6am by the sound of the very high moorland winds rattling the tiles beside our window, which was set in a cross gable.

Spare room decorating: Day 5

Big painting day today, starting with the second coat of gloss on the picture rail and then moving on to the ceiling, where I hope one coat of white emulsion will be enough (I hate painting ceilings). I'm using the same builder's grade white emulsion on the walls above the picture rail.

After lunch I moved down to apply the first coat of peach emulsion to three walls and once that was complete it was obvious that the walls above the picture rail needed another coat of white, so I cracked on with that too.

I would have finished painting earlier had it not been for the arrival of the OvenU man to clean our range. For the first couple of days after we moved in we were convinced there was a gas leak in the kitchen, but it turned out to be the cooker - it was absolutely filthy. We did our best to clean the worst off the main oven so that we could use it, but we didn't want to go anywhere near the grill pan which was an inch deep in rancid fat. Nikki found these guys online - they turn up, take your cooker apart, clean it with industrial-strength stuff and reassemble it. We had them do the cooker hood too, which was also thick with grease. It took the man almost four hours but by the time he'd finished it looked like new. Trouble was whenever I came down from the decorating for a brew, he'd regale me with oven-cleaning tales. Each cuppa ended up taking half an hour!

The second distraction was the arrival mid-afternoon of our new bedroom furniture from Ivy House. After several weeks' searching online we finally went for the Quebec range and it was delivered today in twelve packages (plus mattress). The delivery guys were very helpful and agreed to take most of them up to the first floor, but the two largest wouldn't go up the stairs, prompting Nikki to worry that we'd have to send the whole lot back. I was pretty sure that whatever was in those parcels would fit once the packaging was removed, but even so there's always that small voice of doubt.

Fortunately we'd already arranged to eat with Annie at Wetherspoons so she gave me a lift up with (what turned out to be) the headboard and footboard for our new sleigh bed. Nikki was keen to get the bed assembled - we'd moved our old bed into the study the previous night to leave room for the delivery - so it was another late night by the time we'd figured out where everything went.

Well, not quite everything. We had two strange looking feet left over when it was all put together. Just blocks of wood really with rubber feet on, and a bag containing ten screws. There were no instructions with the bed, and it was too late to work it out, so we gave up wondering and went to bed.

Spare room decorating: Day 4

Today felt like a turning point in the decorating project - the first day I'd dipped a paint brush to apply a final coat - the first coat of satinwood gloss on the picture rail.

My main target for today was to complete the papering. This was the second experiment in the room - to investigate whether heavy-duty (1000 grade) lining paper was good enough to cover the blemishes on the rather strange plasterwork. If it wasn't, it meant that in all the other rooms we'd have to strip the plaster back to brick and have them replastered - obviously a much longer, dirtier and more expensive process and one we wanted to avoid if possible.

We still haven't figured out exactly how the walls in this house have been plastered, but one thing's for sure: we've never seen anything like it. Every wall of the house is roughly finished in what looks like Artex. None of it is done in traditional Artex patterns (apart from the bathroom). It's as if the original plaster was in really bad condition so they had someone in to do the cheapest repair possible - only he wasn't a professional plasterer so he's skimmed it all with Artex. Yuck. Anyway, we're giving the lining paper approach a try - simple, quick and cheap :o)

Another late finish tonight - after 11pm - but the whole room is papered and ready for painting - yayyy!

Spare room decorating: Day 3

After the previous day's disaster with the mega-plank, the first task for today was a trip back to B&Q for a more realistically-sized version. I had another surprise in store - all the shorter planks were more expensive. Didn't take me long to figure out the answer to this though - I bought another 3.6 metre plank and had the man at the cutting desk chop it down to 2.5 metres. Much easier to fit into the car too!

Back home the first job was to sand down the stripped picture rail & rub it down with wire wool soaked in white spirit. Once done, the surface of the wood was a lot cleaner and smoother. If I'd taken more care I could easily have varnished it and left it at that, but I knew that would mean having to strip the skirting boards too and I was on a deadline for this room. It had to be ready for my Mum to use at Christmas, and Blythe a day or two after that.

Final task for today was papering the ceiling - and I knew I had to get the whole lot done in a day to remain on schedule. I've only ever papered a ceiling once before, but the task was made easier by having the new improved plank to hand, and also by the choice of paper - an embossed vinyl which was quite lightweight while still being very resilient. I finished papering a little after 9.30pm and collapsed into the bath exhausted.

Spare room decorating: Day 2

As I mentioned yesterday the spare bedroom, along with most of the other rooms in the house, has some cracks in the ceiling. I'd assumed these were similar to the cracks we used to get in our previous house - that is, they were due to shrinkage or settlement and could be filled and sanded in the usual way. Err...wrong. Turns out the old lath and plaster ceilings have been covered with some sort of heavy-duty paint (possibly latex paint) which had cracked in places and started to peel back. Once I started at this with a scraper it quickly became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to get a good result with filler - the cracks were too shallow - and in any case large areas of paint started to flake off.

I concluded the whole lot needed to be taken off before papering the ceiling; a decision which cost me the whole day and a very sore shoulder!

After climbing repeatedly up and down my step ladder for several hours last night, I'd also decided it was time to buy a plank. This was the first task of the day, as I figured it would save a lot of time and bruised feet. But finding a supplier was tough going. I really wanted a simple scaffolding plank, but couldn't find anywhere that sold them. Eventually I reached B&Q Warehouse in Trafford and found something close to what I was looking for in the builder's yard - a 3.6 metre length of rough-sawn timber for a little over £8. They had shorter ones, but I wanted to be able to set the plank up between two ladders and walk the length of the room without getting down. 3.6 metres looked perfect.

It wasn't so perfect when I got it out to the car though - it wouldn't fit! I had a verrrrry slow journey home, with the plank sticking out of the passenger window and me hanging onto it with one arm; driving with the other. For a start it would slide off its resting place on the door mirror if I cornered too quickly. If I drove any faster than about 25mph the plank would catch the air like a wing and fly up to the top of the window, and if that wasn't enough I was seriously worried about clipping a street light or a parked car with the front end of the plank. I knew I'd only do this once - even at 20mph it would have taken out the rear of my car in a second since the plank was so thick and heavy. Ever noticed how when you're in this situation there are always more police cars around than normal? None of them paid me any attention beyond a few funny looks.

Once I'd safely reached home I soon realised I'd made a big mistake. The plank, which now looked MUCH bigger than it had in the builder's yard - was almost too long to fit through the front door. With great care I got it into the hall, and then upstairs, but it was obvious that it was going to be too long to use in the little room. Back to the stepladder for the day. Doh!

Spare room decorating: Day 1

My last week's holiday starts today and the goal is to complete redecoration of the spare bedroom - the smallest room in the house (besides the smallest room, of course!). It's a bit of a test case in two respects. Firstly I'll be investigating the most effective way of removing the metallic gloss paint from off the picture rail.

We have this in most rooms of the house - it's one of the ubiquitous and idiosyncratic décor features beloved of the previous owners. We've kept it in the lounge (for now) but up here I'm going to see what it looks like with a more traditional white satin finish. This particular room has a gold rail but we also enjoy copper and bronze rails in other rooms.

The other experiment involves lining paper, but more of that later. Today's job is to strip the picture rail and I'm all set up with a can of Nitromors, a pile of wire wool, some white spirit and a pair of heavy duty rubber gloves. One small drawback is the fact that the bedroom window is painted shut so I can't get as much ventilation in the room as I'd like when using Nitromors. Nevertheless I began on a two-foot section by the door, painting the solution on as instructed and waiting five minutes. I spent those five minutes on the computer in another room in deference to the fumes! The next part of the procedure is to work another thick coat of Nitromors into the loosened paint on top of the previous coat, stippling the paint with the brush. I have to say it looks like the brush I'm using will be ruined so I'm glad I chose a cheap one for the job, and I'm also a little concerned at the globs of Nitromors-soaked paint that are falling onto the skirting board and blistering the sleeving on the telephone wire tacked down there.

After a further twenty minutes soaking, the blistered gloopy mixture is ready to be scraped off (carefully!) with a shavehook, revealing the bare wood. Except the wood isn't completely bare - it has several small sections where the paint has not been completely lifted from the surface, so according to the instructions I have to go over this again with coarse wire wool soaked in Nitromors. More mess, more fumes! I'm not enjoying this.

After scraping the rest of the mess off I went over the section again with more wire wool, this time soaked in white spirit. I have to say this is not the most rapid process - it's taken me two hours to clean off two feet of rail (it's the small white section in this picture, which also shows the interesting original rag rolling on the walls) and it's not been pretty. The room is full of carcinogens, the floor is covered in chemical waste and the rail still doesn't look especially clean. If I was intending to varnish onto bare wood it would need more processing but luckily I'll be painting it.

Having wasted so much time on this I decided to "blow torch" the rest using a hot-air stripper and the next two hours saw me stripping off almost twelve feet of rail. Much more effective and a much better finish. I think the rest of the Nitromors can will be relegated to stripping small sections of detailed moulding, if I ever have any. With the picture rail stripped bare, it was time to start scraping and filling the cracks in the ceiling, but I soon realised this was more of a job than it looked.

My new teenager

I've got a new teenager. No, I didn't get her from a shop: she grew up! My younger daughter turned 13 yesterday, and as this weekend was one of their visits, we took them out to Chorlton's newest Japanese restaurant: Yakisoba. We'd heard good things about the place from friends and online forums so we took a chance and went straight there. Normally with a new place Nikki and I will suss it out before taking the girls, in case the menu is weird, or there's something wrong with the place. This time, we put out trust in the good reports, and it paid off really well.

The only online review I could find wasn't very complimentary, but we found the food appetising, the menu varied and the presentation impeccable. But the highlight of the evening was the aromatic crispy duck which both Blythe and I ordered. Not especially Japanese, I hear you say, but it is a firm favourite with all of us and when we realised they serve individual portions, we couldn't resist. SIX pancakes per portion, and easily enough duck to fill them all. Fabulous.

Epigenetics, or "why I got fat"

So following on from the programme on graphene was another fascinating Radio 4 show, this time about epigenetics. There's a huge amount of material available online explaining what this is (try this BBC Horizon link or this news item on the link between epigenetics and obesity, or there's always Wikipedia) so I don't intend to go in for a huge long explanation here, but simply put epigenetics is the idea that it's not only your genes that control how you develop but also the effects of external environmental factors on your genes. These factors can turn genes on or off and are especially influential during foetal development or, in males, before sperm start to develop.

A boy's environment, behaviour, nutrition, etc can affect the gametes and effect changes not only on that boy's children but on his children's children.

Of particular interest to me was the statistical revelation that a father who started smoking before reaching the age of puberty was much more likely to have children that were fatter than average in later life.

So it's nothing to do with all the pies I've eaten! It's because my Dad started smoking when he was eight!