’Tis the season for Destroy It Yourself

AS ANY competent husband will tell you, his toolbox doesn’t lie idle for long. The old homestead will eventually reverberate to the sound of hammers and drills. The timber garden furniture is looking decidedly shabby and rickety, so a trip to the DIY store furnishes the wherewithal to repair the 20-year-old wooden chairs and table. Not being a carpenter, more of a bodge-it-yourself type, I set to with a rip saw and claw hammer. After what seemed like an eternity, the first chair was ready for varnishing. If you ever have to attempt a Destroy-It-Yourself job, be warned: the smaller the task, the greater the mess. The offcuts of timber, old screws and sawdust mingle in with the hand tools that seem to take on a life of their own as they lie beside your feet, wrapped around the power leads that tangle around your ankles. The dust sheet that you carefully laid out on the patio is now wind-blown, scattering wood chips on to the lawn, and your tin of varnish has tipped over, swamping the wood screws. Her indoors hands me a mug of splosh. ‘What, no biccies?’ ‘What did your last servant die of?’ says she. ‘Answering back,’ says I. A screwdriver whistles past my earhole. Organised chaos rolls on for a few more hours before all four chairs and the table have been well and truly cobbled up for another year. Standing back, it looks like a job well done — if you ignore the garden, patio and my shed looking like a war zone. I suspect with the weather changing, many more fellas will realise time is running out: it’s do it now or wait until next year, and as every bloke knows, it’s the ladies that call the shots. I mean, if my old Dutch hadn’t casually mentioned — with menaces — that it needed doing, the garden furniture would have fallen apart. Now it’s finished, I can finally relax in the knowledge of a job well done. ‘Tony, the fence panels need painting.’ Oh lord, here we go again . . .