Fencing with a fake tan

This week I have mostly been fencing. This, however, wasn’t the graceful swordplay of The Mask of Zorro’s Catherine Zeta Jones in white linen.

No, I have been painting the garden fence, and whilst the garden isn’t particularly big, the perimeter seems disproportionately long, a never-ending yellow brick road without the colourful characters along the way. I’d made a mistake buying the cheapest brushes in the DIY superstore – they were ‘value’ because they barely had any bristles and the few they did boast were far enough apart to allow small children to run through the gaps between them.

This limited their capacity to actually transport any wood paint from the bucket to the panelling, and most of it lumped itself onto my feet during the transition, as if I’d been wading through tomato soup.

Cunning in adversity, I developed a speed method of gloop-flicking that within five minutes had dressed me head to toe in bright rust polka dots.

And although I might not have chosen to turn all the flower borders a uniform ‘cedar harvest’, at least the perennials are now covered by a 10-year wood-rot guarantee. On the other side of the fence, my neighbours are garden-proud, and rightly so. If I lean at an odd angle from the stairs window (which I don’t very often) I can see that their garden is horticultural perfection, a delight to behold.

In fact, it was their diligent fence painting that spurred me to knuckle down in the first place.

And as I splashed my way along the adjoining boundary, a more-the-merrier party attitude to paint application, I heard some odd sounds on the opposite side of the fence.

Imagine my horror when, on peering over, The Youngest reported back that my liberal orange was dripping through the slats and altering their ‘dark green pine’ into tiger stripes, which might have suited our jungle-themed family garden but was less appropriate alongside a manicured lawn. I now daren’t show my face outside but The Children assure me that if I stick with the ‘fake tan’ I’ve acquired during the painting process, as long as I stand close to the fence I’ll be well camouflaged. On our side of the fence anyway…