Please help me find this funny story

[Member786488]

I’m mid 50s and read it years ago - it’s funny, think Jerome K Jerome funny.

it’s a short story about a dad who decides he needs to put up a picture, and ropes in the whole family to help… daughter is called to get a hammer, boy to get nails, another child to get a chair… he hits his thumb or something and the whole thing takes ages and involves everyone in the family and dad takes credit for ‘doing everything’.

im probably mis-remembering some/most of it but you get the idea.

put me out of my misery, please…..

Probably not this, but it sounds like the old musical hall song 'When father papered the parlour'.

I'll paste the lyrics anyway because you might enjoy them!

Our parlour wanted papering Pa said it was waste
To call a paperhanger in and so we made some paste
He bought some rolls of paper a ladder and a brush
And with my Mummy's nightgown on at it he made a rush.

Chorus: When Father papered the parlour, you couldn't see pa for paste
Dabbing it here, dabbing it there, paste and paper everywhere
Mother was stuck to the ceiling; the kids were stuck to the floor
I never knew a blooming family so stuck up before.

The pattern was ‘blue roses' its leaves red white and brown
He'd stuck it wrong way up and now we all walk upside down
And when he trimmed the edging off the paper with the shears
The cat got underneath it and Dad cut off both its ears.

Chorus:

Soon Dad fell down the stairs and dropped his paperhanger's can
On little Henrietta sitting there with her young man
The paste stuck them together as we'd thought 'twould be for life
We had to fetch the parson in to make them man and wife.

Chorus:

We're never going to move away from that house any more
For Father's gone and stuck the chairs table to the floor
We can't find our piano though it's broad and rather tall
We think that its behind the paper Pa stuck on the wall.

Chorus:

Now, Father's sticking in the pub through treading in the paste
And all the family's so upset they've all gone pasty faced
While Pa says, now that Ma has spread the news from North to South
He wishes he had dropped a blob of paste in Mother's mouth.

That story is in Jerome K Jerome. It was his uncle Bodger iirc.

OMG thank you! Jean I should have trusted my instincts!

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss
My late Df used to sing that song, and it was the first thing I thought of too!

There's an episode of Peppa Pig like this

My late granddad sang it

@girlmom21 There's also a Paddington story like this - I think it's in the first book.

That's the first thing I thought! I'm so intellectual!

I like to think of myself as cultured @PeskyRooks 🤣

All of you - thank you for the Jerome K Jerome info!! I love his books, but I somehow didn't know or even consider that he might have written short stories. I'm very excited about the possibility of reading more JKJ, and just seen I can get them on Kindle for 49p. You have all made my weekend.

Peppa Pig is a story thief.

"Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done."