“Oops!” I said aloud, although there was no-one around to hear me (Chris was inside, up in his workroom, and he is a tad deaf anyway). Now if I’d had a bucket of water handy I would not have had to think twice – I would have put my foot in it straight away – but I didn’t… All I had was an old paint rag. I didn’t even have my mobile phone on me so I couldn’t take a shot of it (and it would have been a beauty of a photo).

To be honest with you, it was the second time today that I’d had a mishap with the blue paint, and rather thin and runny paint that outdoor wood paint is… In the morning it was just the paintbrush that fell, fully laden with runny blue paint, from the top of the landing by the bridge, down the magnolia-white garden wall, over the Diana statue and into the fuchsias; of course, on it’s way down the paint splattered everywhere. That time I acted swiftly by running down to the bottom immediately and grabbing the hose; with the water pressure on high I aimed the hose at the top of the wall and brought it down over all that had been zapped with blue, which was pretty much everything. And whilst I was about it I hosed the stones, the white garden table and chairs and the conservatory glass door, all of which had been dumb recipients of the drips of blue paint that had seeped through the gaps in the wooden planks of the bridge.

Ah, no lasting harm done except for a few spots of blue paint that had dripped through those same planks onto my back while I was hosing. My favourite white top went into bleach and my orange shorts into detergent; my apron was okay because the paint caught me only on my back (should have worn my apron around the wrong way!).

Later on, when I went up to admire our newly painted blue bridge, I noticed that some splashes of water from the hose had caused the paint to dry oddly. “That won’t take me long,” I thought to myself. I put on my still clean apron again and, armed with a rag and a small bucket half-filled with the left-over paint from earlier, went back up to the bridge a brush; the bucket used to contain yogurt and was just the right size for small paint jobs. Unfortunately, the yogurt bucket is made of quite thin plastic with precious little substance and the lid was on tightly, and when I managed eventually to pull the lid off… well, you can imagine…

What would you have done with half a yogurt bucket of runny blue paint landed on your foot? And no water in sight, just a paint rag? I dipped the brush on my blue covered foot and painted the bridge; then I put the rag around my foot and hot-footed it down the steps to the hose…

It’s funny how blue pigment is so difficult to remove. The worst of it came off. It came off my thong sandals and it almost came off the quarry tiles; it came off my skin, although three toe nails are still sky-blue (who needs nail varnish?); I fear it will never come out of my favourite orange pants but I’ll like them nonetheless as a painting outfit.

Now I’m done with painting for the day. I’ve had two showers (as have the walls, plants and the statue of Diana) and I’m not risking any more accidents. Am I feeling a bit blue? Not really, the bridge looks lovely and I’ve had a bit of fun recounting the tale to you.

The photos below were taken after second hosing down.