The wallpaper task will be epic, I think, this old wallpaper – there are two or three rows of wallpaper – has a mind of its own, and I have charged into this task with vinegar, a special enzyme solution and fabric softener, all mixed with water. It took five or six hours to get this much off, and my back, arms and legs are shouting at me. Great fun, though. Maria will get obsessed over this if I let her. But I want to do it myself, at least most of it. I’m getting the hang of it, scraping easy, spraying lots of warm water with various glue-eating solvents. This is not a small or clean task. The walls are fighting back, I can feel them hanging on to Florence’s last wallpaper hanging.

The good news is that the plaster underneath is clean and solid, at least this portion.

I am going at it as often as I can I return in the morning. I’m not writing the next few days, the Frieda manuscript is back in the hands of my editors. I am getting stubborn about this.