“With five weeks left before the Falklands deployment, this fortnight’s arena build delivered a mystery illness, a small fruit-fly massacre, and a lighting upgrade completed via prayer to the Baby Jesus, Kratos, and the Traveller from Destiny 2. Here’s how the skirting boards nearly won.“

The Plague and the Proving Grounds

My upcoming detachment to the Southern Hemisphere approaches like a boss fight starting before you’ve had a chance to save. My response? Lying on the sofa, having apparently contracted the flu shaped thing that officially left the building sometime in 2023 and yet, mysteriously, keeps popping back for guest appearances. Fever, fatigue, and every ache from every single one of my lived years, all at once. Add a sprinkle of the localised seagull invasion and you have, in fairness, a perfectly normal fortnight up here in Elgin.

Eventually I summoned the strength to spam the square button, rose from what felt like my death bed, and was back on the offensive with some easy(ish) wins.

My first objective was the installation of the new LED lighting units. Out went the fluorescent strips, a cultural touchstone of every GP waiting room and interrogation scene ever filmed, and in came the dual mounted, colour changing, akimbo LEDs. If I’m going to procrastinate my way through a war zone, I may as well do it under decent mood lighting.

Prayers to my Holy Trinity

Dismantling the old lighting fixture revealed wires twisted together like a bread tie rather than anything so fancy as a Wago block. At this point of the project, it barely registers. I have become the sort of man who is simply unshockable in the face of amateur electrics, a War Photographer of DIY negligence. A tactical Screwfix run later on my bicycle, wiring replaced, main power restored, I did what any rational adult does before flipping a switch on his own handiwork. I quietly appealed directly to the Gods, my Gods, specifically Baby Jeebus, Kratos (the God of War), and the Traveller from Destiny 2, a pantheon assembled with all the theological rigour of a man hedging his bets.

My first prayer? Don’t trip the fuse when it goes back to “ON.” Prayer two, (once the fuse box declined to explode) don’t kill me on the follow through at the wall switch. I hit it and waited for what felt like an eternity, senses heightened, life suddenly a slow motion movie… and then the light arrived. Beautiful, soft, lush light. I had performed skilled manual labour and, most importantly, remained un-electrocuted. Mortal Kombat fans of the “Finish Him!” variety, I’m told, wanted better content from me.

The Skirting Board Genocide

The LED light completion brings me to the skirting boards, a subplot that has, at time of writing, claimed two hoodies, a pair of shorts, and a paintbrush population it would be tasteless to count.

The plan was a PlayStation red border to give some definition between carpet and wall paint. I was too late to install actual skirting boards, so I achieved the look via a composite wood moulding, a primer coat, and three coats of gloss. The third exists purely because nature intervened, twice.

Allow me to explain. Painting outdoors during Elgin’s one sanctioned heatwave of the year seemed inspired right up until I remembered I’d left the boards drying beside the food recycling bins, at which point several hundred fruit flies made the ultimate sacrifice and were entombed, mid-flight, in glossy red permanence. A monument no one asked for, especially me. No rain, mercifully, which given the general run of luck here felt like an oversight on someone’s part. Casualties scraped off, boards relocated, Coat Two applied, at which point the bluebottles arrived to finish what the fruit flies started. Their arrival in turn summoned Elgin’s seagulls, less a nuisance than a standing army, who left my trim decorated with sticky, editorial footprints by morning. Coat Three, then, applied not for finish but for damage control, in the proud tradition of governments issuing a statement to bury a story.

A Rare Outbreak of Things Going Right

In the middle of all this self-inflicted chaos, something happened that I was entirely unprepared for. A job that just went well. Grampian Furnishings came in, looked at a floor that had spent 5 years doubling as a crime scene for how not to treat flooring joists’, and laid a carpet with a calm competence that made me suspicious that it was a trick. But for once, it really wasn’t.

No wires twisted like bread ties, no prayers required, no seagulls involved at any stage. Just a bare concrete slab one day and a properly finished room the next. This was genuinely, stupidly good work, and about the only part of this build that didn’t require an apology to the local wildlife afterwards.

What Next?

With the Falklands clock ticking loudly in the background, the room remains a bizarre hybrid of active construction site and tool graveyard. Before I can even think about actual gaming gear, a deeply unglamorous list of finishing strikes stands between me and a finished arena:

• Operation Ceiling Polish: What was supposed to be a localised touch up to cover where the fluorescent strips once dominated has devolved into painting the entire ceiling white. Naturally. I bought the paint, so now I am legally and morally obligated to use it.
• The Fenestration Frame Dilemma: The front window frames are getting the signature PlayStation Red treatment. The rear window frames? They desperately need a coat of something, but I’m currently locked in strategic indecision over the colour palette.
• Glazing & The Mudroom Phase: The front windows need a proper clean, and the entrance zone still needs to be sanded down and painted to match the rest of my life.
• The Evacuation & Procurement Run: Finally, emptying every single hammer, saw, and paint tin out of the room so I can actually cross the threshold into the best phase. Purchasing the furniture!