It started with a trip to Block and Quayle for five litres of emulsion. A colour no longer off the shelf but available to be mixed, a flat white, tinted and shaken to become green earth, a greyish green like damp potting clay. It replaced the sandy yellow on the walls, lightening and brightening the entrance hall, fresher, cleaner and reinvigorating. Brushed on, cut into the white of the ceiling, edged round the door frames and the skirting boards. A fresh emulsion painted against the aged and yellow gloss paint of the woodwork.
Out comes the pure brilliant white gloss, one coat, thick and glutinous that sticks to the drab fixtures and transforms them from cheese to chalk, from Gouda to milk white but once started it cannot be stopped. Every brush stroke highlights the difference between the new and the old, the fresh from the moribund and takes you further and further into the house. Each brush stroke is a reminder of how long the paintwork has been left, how long you have put the job off.
The tins say low odour, low emission but the paint stinks. The emulsion is a dank depressing smell like wet nappies or a school blazer caught in a shower and drying against a radiator. The gloss is worse, much worse. It is a sickly sweet smell that sticks to the inside of your nostrils, fills your throat and seems to seep through your body to settle in the base of your stomach. Its cloying smell grows inside you and you can’t shake it off, it taints everything you taste and it is the only smell that you can sense. It sticks to your clothes, permeates through your skin and through your eyes. It makes your head hurt, your nose run and your joints ache.
You throw open every window and flap the doors on their hinges to get the air circulating but this only gives a momentary reprieve. As soon as the breath settles the smell rises to occupy the space with a Brownian motion that fills every corner, every nook and cranny. And when you go to bed it gets worse. The windows are tight shut and the doors are ajar and the vapours are free to roam. They creep into your dreams and into your soul and you wake up feeling nauseous and disoriented. You wake up in a bad humour only to start all over again as there are still walls to be refreshed and woodwork to be whitened.
Ah the joys of painting and to think it all started with five litres of green earth emulsion.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 