Being a contortionist would help

I had discovered, on my previous trip, that the paint we had chosen for the external woodwork had a peculiar quality that was almost malignant. I had taken advantage of some reasonable weather to paint the shutters on the bedroom windows. It was easy enough to reach the shutters on the downstairs window, but the upstairs bedroom was a bit trickier. It didn't help that the ladder left by the previous owners was too short for the job - not that I like climbing ladders anyway as I have no head for heights. The only way for me to do the job was from inside the bedroom. This involved placing a step-stool on the floor beneath the window, a spot which just happened to be the most uneven in the whole room. Hard as I tried, I could not get all four feet of the stool to touch the ground at the same time. So I balanced precariously on the stool, pulled the right-hand shutter towards me and held it closed with my left hand while wielding a paintbrush in my right. Every time I climbed off the stool to recharge the paintbrush, the wretched shutter swung open and I had to lean out of the window to pull it back again.

There is no way that I can use a paintbrush in my left hand, so when it came to painting the other, left-hand shutter, I had to hold it in place with my left hand and reach across myself underneath my left arm to bring the brush into contact with the shutter. As before, the shutter swung open every time I recharged the brush.

Painting the other side of those shutters proved even more precarious. Another hand would have been a blessing as I had to stand with one foot on the wobbling stool and one on the window ledge with most of my body outside. I needed one hand to hold the shutter, one for the paintbrush - and another one to hang on for grim death!

I have now purchased a longer ladder.