It is decided

Legend has it (well, it's true, I was there) that it took Jim and me two years to decide what colour to paint the house. We settled on turquoise, and it was obviously a good choice because we haven't been tempted to change it in the succeeding eight years.

It has taken nearly as long, and, if such a thing were possible, more stressful, deciding, agreeing and above all settling on a colour scheme for Warrior. (Well, we didn't have to worry about signwriting the house.)

But here it is. It is now settled and the paint is ordered, so there is no going back. OK, this, anyway, is my understanding (I await Jim's contribution in the comments). Most of Warrior will remain resplendent in Raddle Red. The cabin, from the back to just forward of the engine room, where the beam is, will be dark grey - Craftmaster Graphite Grey - and after some deliberation, shiny. The beam, pseudo side-beamy bits and various other butch bits of metal will be shiny black. There will be black elephant's toenails front and back. The writing will be framed in black, and will be written in black and cream. Or possibly cream and black. The red is for the handrail, but only on the grey part, aft of the beam. The roof will stay raddle red, but will have diamonds to the biscuit tin (but that is phase two). Jim has Plans for the slides, into which I do not enquire too deeply.

We'll be using Craftmaster paint, cos we like it well so far. In the past we've always bought it direct from Phil and co. but as the Shotbolts are stockists we've ordered this lot from them. We'll still be having Dave Moore do the signwriting, provided he hasn't got fed up with waiting for us to get round to the painting. This we are aiming to do over Easter, but we have to get the floating paint dock into some sort of shape first and the weather forecast is not promising.

Still, the paint is ordered, and that is a step in the right direction.