The fourth part of my memoirs.
* * * * *
Once Trish and I were married, we moved into an unfurnished flat. Actually, it was the downstairs half of a big old converted Victorian terrace - the sort where you share the outside front door with the upstairs flat, but each household has its own door off the front hallway. It was a bit tatty but very cheap. In fact, tatty wasn't the word - it really needed decorating, and so we got on with things with a will. Even though it was rented accommodation, we couldn't stand living in it as it was, and we got the landlord's permission to "do it up" a bit, as long as we didn't do anything too extreme.
So one summer's day we were painting our internal hallway, and getting very hot while doing so - there was no ventilation in there, with the door to the common hallway shut. Because it was so hot, we soon had our shirts off, then as odd drops of paint started flying around we decided it would be simpler to strip off completely. Skin's cheaper to clean than clothes, after all, and emulsion paint comes off easily enough with a bit of soap and water.
The best-laid plans...
Trish was proving (very effectively) that she can never paint anything above shoulder height without getting paint all the way up the brush handle and all over her arms and hands. I swear I've never known anyone quite as good at getting in a mess while painting. Anyway, this time she swore luridly as she got yet another load of Dulux County Cream up her arm, and as I turned to see what was the matter, I accidentally sloshed paint on her right tit with the wet paintbrush that I was holding.
Since she was feeling hot and irritable, she decided that I'd done it deliberately, and lost her rag. "I'll teach you!" she shrieked - and promptly whopped a brushful of paint onto my chest. Of course, this soon deteriorated into a paint fight. We did get the hallway painted eventually, but we also ended up pretty well covered in off-white emulsion ourselves! So once we'd finished the painting, we made for the bathroom to run a hot bath to wash the paint off.
But now Murphy's Law struck. As I wrestled with the stiff bath tap, I must have strained the pipe join; the plumbing chose that moment to spring a rather significant leak. Water was pouring out onto the bathroom floor from somewhere behind the bath. I had to find and turn off the stopcock for the flat. Quickly. Very quickly. Very quickly indeed!
Fortunately (considering my state of dress) the stopcock was inside our flat, in a kitchen cupboard.
So there we were, both of us starkers and completely plastered in damp white paint! We couldn't even run hot water from the kitchen sink, because we didn't have a hot tank - all the hot water came from one of those instant gas Ascot devices that heats it straight off the mains, and I'd had to turn off the mains.
Well, luckily we were already on very good informal terms with our upstairs neighbours, Gordon and Linda. I dragged on some old underpants and knocked on the door at the bottom of their stairs. Once Gordon had recovered from his fits of laughter at seeing the state I was in, I explained what had happened and asked if we could borrow their bath to clean up in. The two flats had separate stopcocks, so their water supply was still OK.
They were more than willing to let us use their bath, but Trish decided she didn't have any old undies that would stand being put on over wet paint and mucked up. She called to Gordon, "I'm all covered in paint too, and I really don't want to mess up any more clothes - d'you mind awfully if I come up there in the nuddy?"
Well, what gentleman would turn down such a polite request? "Of course not," he said. "Liberty Hall - don't worry about us!"
So Trish promptly marched round the corner into the shared hallway where Gordon could see her (he had started to turn away politely, but Trish didn't wait). Then she spotted that I was still standing there in my underpants. She wasn't having that if she was starkers, so she whipped them down and off me, and chucked them back into our hallway, saying "I'm not going to be the only one in my birthday suit!"
So we went on upstairs, wearing nothing but white paint, while our hosts tried to avoid wetting themselves laughing at the sight of us. We went on into their bathroom... and made full use of the facilities to clean ourselves up.
The paint came off easily enough in a hot bath (in fact, it was quite fun examining each other's nooks and crannies to make sure it was all off), and we were soon clean and presentable again. And only then did we realise that in our panic, we hadn't brought any towels or clean clothes up with us!
Trish called out and asked Linda if we could borrow a towel. "Of course you can," Linda said, "use the one that's hanging on the rail already. It's big enough for two."
It was, and we did so, and so we were soon dry; but then we had to try to work out how to make both of us decent with just one large towel (and a damp one, at that) between the two of us. Of course, one of us could have wrapped the towel round themselves and gone downstairs to fetch some clothes - but for some reason that idea simply didn't occur to us. And don't ask me why we should care anyway, when Gordon and Linda had already seen both of us walk past them in bare skin and paint - but for some reason, it did seem to matter.
So, while we were scratching our heads over this puzzle, Linda called through the bathroom door, "Would you two like a cup of tea?"
"Oh, yes, please, not half!"
