‘My wife had received a word to wise from the first Mrs Little about my foray into the world of Black & Decker’
PROJECTS: INSTALLATION OF BIRD FEEDERS & PUT UP SPICE RACK
My wife Siofra was happier than me that I had a book to finish writing during lockdown. For it meant that I was able to socially distance from any major jobs that were needed around the house
I’d set out at the start of the coronavirus crisis with ambitious notions of reconstructing myself as a new man — a handyman.
I’d promised myself when it came to home improvements that instead of sitting on the fence I would paint it instead in my moments away from my keyboard.
But the brush off came after I realised that everyone else in Northern Ireland seemed to be having the same colourful idea during the great weather in the great outdoors and supplies of fence paint became like golddust.
The stories of friends going on cross-border shopping raids to get their precious pots took the gloss off the whole thing.
The next brainwave in the heatwave was to buy new garden furniture to enjoy the sunshine but only hours after I finally struggled to put the online delivery together from its huge boxes it started to rain.
And my ample posterior has rested in the wicker chairs no more than twice in the last couple of months.
More bum notes followed with the installation of bird feeders in the garden and a veritable aviary of feathered friends enlivened our isolation until the arrival of mice hungering for the scraps hastened the speedy removal of the seeds.
It was back to the drawing board and I reckoned a more possible lockdown project would be to add a new string to my bow with the ukulele gathering dust in the corner of the living room.
However, the fat fingers that made me abandon my George Formby aspirations before the pandemic hadn’t slimmed down any during it.
And it was anything but music to the ears of my wife when I suggested I would purchase a drill to help her with tasks aroundthe house.
She’d received a word to the wise from the first Mrs Little who told her of my earliest foray into the world of Black & Decker at a time when she said Desmond Dekker would have made a better fist of the DIY.
My first — and last — task was to use the spanking new B&D to put up a spice rack in the kitchen.
I thought I knew the drill. But not a bit of it.
A friend who’d laughed at my ham-fisted attempts at woodwork in school and who had just tiled his own kitchen was invited round to see the fruits of my laboured labour.
As I proudly showed him what had been all my own work the spice rack crashed to the floor smashing bottles into smithereens.
Back in lockdown even my exercise regime hit the buffers. After Joe Wick-ing it every morning I walked round the garden a la Captain Tom Moore until I realised my daily dandering had left a circle of tramped down grass in its wake. Did I fix it myself ? Did I hell. I got in a professional to sort it out.
❝ I walked around the garden a la Captain Tom Moore, leaving a circle of tramped down grass