WB Pippin: Before and after.........

This morning I leapt from my bed seized with an earnest intent to scrub the bathroom floor.

Which I duly did.

I even washed up beforehand......

So, what's the reasoning behind this unseemly outburst of domesticity, and all in dawn's early light?

Well, 'tis twofold: This coming weekend, wb Pippin is going to form part of a wedding flotilla of boats conveying the lovely Julius and Kate from Bottisham Lock to their nuptial celebrations in Ely.

There was "no way we are doing any of the above with the bathroom floor in that state".....

Thus spake my beloved...........

At about 06:45.

Also, I was in sore need of some 'Good Scout' points in order to make another furtive trip up to Wisbech to see how the Alvis is coming along.

So here's the floor, 'after'..........

Please take particular note of the gleaming grouting.....

(That grey patch just to the right of the sink pedestal is reflection from the camera's flash, okay?)

And yes, that is a full-size bath.

It's a widebeam thing.......

"So where's the 'before'," I hear you cry.....

Oh please.

Give me a break.

Publish photos of your own pre-once-over bathroom floor on the internet and see what your spouse thinks of the idea........

(I'd have died.......... Horribly.......)

But I do have a 'before' shot for you.

It's of something completely different, but it's definitely a 'before' shot.....

Remember the recent C.S. Lewis-inspired furniture behaviour involving wardrobes?

(Scroll down a few posts if you are new to this nonsense and haven't yet run screaming from the room......).

Well, having done literature, I have now decided to take inspiration from the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

Yes, I know he was as mad as a sack of badgers and was a self-harmer, but I'm leaving my ears well alone.......

The inspirational painting is Van Gogh's 'Chair'.

Now, if I was clever like James and Amy, I'd be able to do a link to The National Gallery's website and the web page about this work.

But I'm not.

So you'll have to open another window and Google it.

Had a look?

Good.

So you've seen Van Gogh's 'Chair'?

This is John Witts' 'Chair':

Okay, so Vincent didn't have the aluminium stepladders, the Black and Decker workmate and sundry old tool boxes to augment his composition......

But he wasn't working in the scrap shed up at Emmaus.

(And anyway, I feel they add a certain post-modernist frisson........)

But never mind all that, why is this chair so important?

Well, in all honesty, I don't suppose it is, really.

Except that it is the nursing chair that my Mum used when looking after both me and my sister Nikki.

It has been hanging on a nail on the wall of the garage in Bournemouth for the thick-end of thirty years.

It was recovered with all my Alvis junk a couple of weeks ago.

I have decided to restore it.

Doubtless, devotees of Freud and Jung will have a field day analysing exactly why I should want to embark on such a task, but *unprintable anatomical references* to them.......

I think it is a dear little chair.

It shall be saved.

'After' pictures will follow............

Now, where was I?

Oh yes, making 'another furtive trip up to Wisbech to see how the Alvis is coming along.'

On the way, I saw this:

Is it me?

Or is the Graphic Designer responsible for the logo having a bit of a laugh with his customers?

For that looks very much like one 'i' in the middle of a stylistic forehead to me...........

Hmmmmm................

(A big High Six to all in The Fens, by the way..................)

But I digress................

The Alvis is looking pretty much as knackered and as hopeless as it did in the last update.

But only to the untutored eye! (Probably the same one that graces the "Welcome to Fenland" logo.....)

The sill timbers are in place.

Close-up showing joining pieces and the metal support bracket being offered up. These will give the crucial 'B' posts (wot the doors 'ang orf) some much needed strength.