The boards are delivered in a flat bed truck. You have to organise a time where you and the delivery team will be in the same place at the same time. The doorbell croaks their arrival and heavy set men in iridescent green tops haul in the sheets. The boards are rectangular and long, not quite as heavy as a refrigerator but just enough for one person to manage. Documents are signed and the lorry ’s diesel motor gurgles in reverse down the one way street.
So here I am with 10 sheets of plaster board, lumps of four by two and a vague plan to build a soundproof room in this rented house without telling the landlord. The framing work had begun weeks before and now represented a significant spider web in the second bedroom. Attachment of the sheets would surely be a simple task, but from the moment I began moving the first one I realised it was like trying to move a mini minor with the motor off. The fire of my vision started to hiss as water was poured on it. Placing the first sheet against the frame I began banging in a nail – overly conscious of the noise I was making in my undercover operation. As the head of the nail reached the face of the board and I made my first divot with the hammer, I knew a plan ‘B’ was needed. Where I had fractured the surface lay a crescent of pain, a bruise on the snowy virgin surface, it leaked the blood of the board; a fine sifting of chalky powder. I flew back on clouds of memory to writing on a blackboard in primary school and walking away with chalk on my hands and then biting my finger nails. The taste was terrible, flat and neutral a ‘nothing’ taste. This is how I Imagined the residue I now held on my fingers to taste……..
