My life currently revolves around the removal of wallpaper.
It’s a fight of two rounds. In the first, the upper layer of paper (often textured, sometimes painted) has to be torn away from its backing. In the second, the backing plus excess adhesive has to be steamed away from the plaster.
It’s long work but I made the good decision to get hold of a decent steamer. And it’s a curiously rewarding process, even though the mess is overwhelming.
My current account has these things called Spaces: essentially ringfencing money as if in savings but just obfuscating the amount you have doing nothing for you in your current account. Nevertheless, it feels like a reasonably mature way to conduct short-term saving. Well, not saving, just not spending. I feel tremendously grown up having a ‘space’ where I am ‘saving’ each month towards my next phone, as opposed to what I’d normally do: slap down the credit card and then at the end of the month wonder where my pay cheque went. Managing personal finances is like a series of lies we tell ourselves to sleep better at night. A religion, perhaps.