There will be blood

Yesterday evening, I returned more tired than I have ever been in this saga. I had been applying (on hands and knees) a mixture of linseed oil, turpentine and siccative to the floor tiles. In theory, 24 hours later, the resultant film of oxydised linseed oil can be buffed to a really nice patina. The physical toil can be deduced from a reading of Caillebotte's painting of floor scrapers.

Here was the rub: yesterday afternoon, the better half got a telephone call from the removal men, who had been hammering down the motorway from Rouen. Instead of delivering our furniture late afternoon, they would bring it at eight o'clock sharp in the morning. Nothing for it but to go in before daybreak and see what could be done with the floors, which I had left like the Metropolitan Police skidpan training centre.

Well, under the cruel glare of naked lightbulbs, the floor this morning looked like that scene from There Will Be Blood, when, at the bottom of the pit, thick oil starts to ooze. The floor was a skating rink. Dangerous to me but lethal to removal men carrying unbalanced loads and not being able to see where they were putting their feet. Time for emergency action. Unrolling wads and wads of kitchen towel, I skated over the surface with big absorbent wads under my feet. It was a quarter to seven. At five past seven the removal men came, and the floor was still glistening and as slippery as black ice.

Basically, I had to undo all the work I had done yesterday, stripping off the oil just as the siccative was nicely starting to cure the oil to form a protective film. The result is the flooring equivalent of eczema, and the wiping had to be redone the whole time the removal was being carried out, because the tiles give back the oil applied to them, reforming the skating rink.

Now the task of re-oiling will be much more complicated, because there is furniture everywhere. That will require fresh purchases of linseed oil, etc., but also the application of a fresh coat of huile de coudes.