LIFE LESSONS KATY HARRINGTON

I have foreseen my death and it involves DIY

IHAVE foreseen my death, and it involves a cordless drill. I always thought I’d die from lack of broccoli, or from watching too much Project Runway, but now I’m sure it will be death by misadventure while trying to hang a Chuck Berry poster on my wall.

If I said, since moving into my flat, I’ve become DIY obsessed, it would only be a half truth. Though it’s true I now spend much of my days scrolling through pictures of ottomans on Ikea, Made.com and Habitat — all of which are well out of my very modest price bracket.

The other half of the day is more grounded in realism, searching ‘free furniture, no cat hair’ on Gumtree and going to pound shops to buy toilet brushes and a single set of cutlery (that was Valentine’s Day).

Anyway, as I have nothing to sit on other than my fat ass, I find a free armchair on Gumtree and arrange to collect it from its very grand home in Hampstead.

The chair is gratis but I have to pay £40 for a man with a van to get it home. The man’s name is John. He lives on a houseboat and never shuts up about his travels in Italy and love of Italian coffee. John hears my accent and presumes that I need a narrated tour of London, drawing my attention to buildings of note and then mansplaining them to me.

On the drive back, he points out a swanky flat and tells me Alfred Hitchcock’s son lives there. Then he starts telling me who Alfred Hitchcock was. John doesn’t stop talking until he has to help me lug the bulky chair up four flights of stairs to my flat.

Once he’s gone, all that is left to do is to hang my pictures. For that I need a drill and a knowledge of preWorld War II wiring. I bet John has both.