I walked the streets of East London, only vaguely aware that I was in a daze. My feet seemed to know what they were doing, and since the rest of me was tired out from from being on a ladder for the last four and a half hours, my slightly addled brain reckoned that trusting my feet was logical.
As I walked along, the chilly wind began to clear my fogged brain. Surely Old Street Station wasn't this far from Bethnal Green when I walked earlier? I blinked and looked around me.
I had somehow wandered all the way to London Bridge.
Today, I painted a ceiling in Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium. So far my contributions to the widely anticipated cat cafe have largely been in the digital world, helping to SEO and write things up for the website. This weekend was the first I was free at the same time as the Emporium needing some DIY work done, so I volunteered to help do some painting.
After a few minutes of making a fuss of the cats, I found myself in a boiler suit with a paint roller in my hand and a tall step ladder under my feet, ready to paint the room that would become the cat's quiet room. I throught of those adverts with smug middle class people painting their own homes. How hard could it be?
A few minutes in and I'd already given up on keeping my hands clean of paint, both now as white as the ceiling was to become, and there was already paint on my face and in my hair.
I say a few minutes in- I'm not entirely sure how long it took for me to give up on keeping myself clean. I'd left my watch upstairs with my belongings to protect them from getting painted. In fact, the combination of being watchless while concentrating on my work messed my internal clock up so much that, when I finally got round to asking Lauren what the time was on one of her trips through the room, the hour I thought had passed was actually three.
'Just a little bit more, and then I'm done,' I thought. I finished the ceiling, and did a bit of work on the walls for a few minutes. My legs had gotten a little wobbly, but I put this down to the weird position you have to put yourself in when painting on a ladder.
When I was done, another helper popped through and I asked him what the time was. My 'few minutes' was actually an hour and a half! At least I'd finished the ceiling, and done some of the walls too. I was feeling a bit light-headed though... maybe I should call it a day. I shrugged off my boiler suit, scrubbed up and went to tell Lauren that I was heading home. Lauren looked at me and her brows furrowed.
"Tash, are you feeling okay? You look a bit... out of it."
"Well, I do feel a bit weird," I said. Suddenly I realised that I had been so focused on my work, so unaware of the time, I'd not left the room once in the four and a half hours I was painting. I hadn't even opened the door.
"Er.. I think you might be wired on paint fumes," Lauren said, looking both concerned and amused. I may have smiled a goofy smile.
After assuring Lauren I was fine and wasn't going to pass out, I headed out with the intention of getting to Old Street station- just a ten minute walk away from the cafe.
...Of course, now we know I ended up walking from East London to the south side of the Thames without even noticing.
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