The Truth (with grout)

I had finally bitten the bullet, and had started to tile the kitchen splashback, the first bit had gone relatively well, apart from the plug sockets being in the wrong place and skewiff, now it was time to grout. I had spent a long time trawling the net looking for advice. Eventually I plumped for the ultimate handyman, he gave good advice and had a penchant for doing work slightly out of shot, or, in the case of grouting, working on a piece the same colour as the grout so that you couldn't distinguish anything. This degree of..., I won't say ineptitude as this would be completely unfair, especially compared to my degree of ept, ... of lack of forethought, appealed to me, it was something I could identify with.

I made up the grout to some sort of consistency, and then began to apply it, on the video it goes on like whipped cream on a sponge cake, mine went on like damp sand onto a small child, in fact the splashback looked exactly like that, and a child who had been digging the beach at Weston-Super-Mare no less. We used to holiday at Weston, at the Mead's farm, I can remember, gagging at the fact the milk was warm in the morning, it would be, it had just come out of a cow, the conveyor lift that was used to stack the bales in the barn, and the fact that the tide used to retreat for miles leaving a beach that after you'd dug in about a foot (30cm) used to weep black, sulphide-stinking mud (probably the raw sewage outfall from Bristol), still, there were donkeys.

My grouting continued, I used my grout float, a scraper, and then my fingers to push the sand into the cracks, then I did sponging, Herculean sponging, repeat sponging, I assiduously sponged that wall until my sand-besplattered baby was discovered to be an artful selection of pied tiles. The grout provided the relief necessary to point out the tiles that weren't flat, or the odd bit where they weren't quite the same distance apart. I hate grout.

I'm now involved with removing grout dust, from everywhere.