and I'm not keen on plasterboard either

Maybe after finding and terrorising the Installer of the Horrid Walls (see yesterday) I could continue the theme by locating and capturing the inventor of plasterboard. Whilst it may be slightly less messy and slightly more convenient than lath/plaster it's still not exactly the most workable or pleasant-to-use stuff in the world. Whilst a 2400*1200 sheet could be said to be quite big by some (certainly from the POV of someone attempting to carry it undamaged up a narrow spiral stairwell) it's not big enough to entirely cover one 6m*2.8m wall without several joins. I may have mentioned before how annoying it is to live in an ostensibly rectilinear building in which no angle is exactly 90­°, no two planes are exactly parallel nor perpindicular and where not one single wall is anywhere approaching perfectly flat. This lumpiness is again raising its lumpy head and giggling as I frown at the seemingly random depth of the joists. Perhaps the complication of the chimney confused the original constructors. Maybe the late 1800s were superstitious times in which straight lines were deemed the work of the Devil. The placement of the boards is not helped by narrowness of the joists and their positioning such that none of them are in the right place for the edges of two adjacent boards to be anchored to the same member. I have little faith in plasterboard nails at the best of times but there is no way they would cope with the various extra ties and supports which will be required to get the edges of boards to meet which earnt me a brief moment out in the sunshine in the afternoon when I ran out of bugle-headed screws.

The builders of the flat will be long parted from life and thus unfortunately unreachable. I'll just have to hope that their graves are the ones favoured by tramps as beds and toilets. The inventor of plasterboard may still be with us; I can imagine no more fitting fate than trapping him at the bottom of a deep, dark well armed with nothing more than some sheets of plasterboard, a padsaw and some plasterboard nails. Only by constructing a ladder capable of holding his weight from the available fragile materials could he escape.

On the plus side plasterboard does insulate sound reasonably well which should at least shield us slightly from Mrs Clumpy's blaring wireless upstairs.

I'll have to remember to make a discreet little notice warning future occupants to try and avoid placing anything flat too close to the wall lest it highlight the latter's undulations.