My theory is that good design should be practical, helpful and as often as possible - beautiful. However, I am dealing with a most unhelpful design at the moment and it almost has me beaten.

You see, I want to turn my recently vacant room into a colourful, cheerful and beautiful place to work and create. In order to do justice to the deep dusky pink walls, they need white stripes and nothing else will do. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of impracticals stood in the way which include physical limitations, uneven and cold walls as well as no particular clue as to the best way to achieve this look.

Friends came over on the weekend to help with the physical limitations, they reached areas my neck refuses to at the moment and my brother - the engineering consultant, came over later with his house mate for a second shift. Probably the wrong order but that's how impractical things go.

At the end of the day, half of one wall was taped, ready for painting because the engineering consultant refused to do any more given how badly the lines were ruled. Later on Tuesday, I was running out of the house to get to work, glanced in the window and saw half of the measely bits of very expensive painters tape just hanging around - about an inch off the wall. Yeah, normal tape could never do that.

Consoled myself by catching up on an episode of Dr Who I had missed only to discover that even the Daleks could manage a paint job and I still had had no luck.