Want your dream home? Just DIY!
LIKE the It worker Graham Harley, who built his family a home after learning all the skills he needed from Youtube videos (Mail), we built our own house. It was back in 1975, on a half-acre piece of unused farmland. We had two small children and a dog, but we worked all day, and most of the night, and built it ourselves. We did all the groundwork and laid every brick. the only thing we had any help with was the plastering. We had the advantage that my husband Allan is a plumber and he was able to pick the brains of other tradesmen. But, basically, we learnt as we went along. We moved in during a very hot July after just eight months of building work. the house was far from complete: there were only concrete floors and instead of a bathroom and kitchen we had a standpipe in the garden! But we soon transformed it into the house of our dreams. We extended our happy home over the 43 years we lived there, even adding a holiday cottage in the garden. We sold it three years ago to move to a smaller house in the centre of our village, but we will always be proud that we did it ourselves.
MAUREEN JOHNSON, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
Harsh realities
sINCE the NHs is no longer testing people for coronavirus unless they are already in hospital, how will we know when the pandemic is reaching its peak?
Without accurate data, we will be reliant on computer modelling, which, since it is based on a relatively small database of notifications to date, could prove to be wildly inaccurate.
How can we hope to combat the pandemic if we don’t know the true size of the problem?
JOHN SMITH, Warrington, Cheshire.
MANY people are panicking as to how they will cope with being at home all day, unable to continue their social activities, receive visitors or have access to all the external stimuli upon which they depend.
Welcome to the real world for many elderly and disabled people.
these worriers need to get a grip, accept that this will be short term and use their enforced inactivity to take stock of what is important in their lives. It will do them good to be still and consider what really matters. perhaps they will emerge from self-isolation ready to live a more balanced life. DOREEN CLARKE, Spalding, Lincs.
Selfish hoarders
HAs the world gone mad? I was telling my neighbour how worried I was that supplies of Calpol have all sold out because of stockpiling and panic buying.
I have three children and it is the only non-prescription medication I can rely on for colds, fevers and pain.
she went quiet and then said she could help me out.
Handing over a bottle of Calpol, she admitted that the other week she had spent a whole day with her husband going from pharmacy to pharmacy until they had managed to buy 30 bottles!
that’s more than a family would use throughout their offspring’s whole childhood.
Name supplied, Maidenhead, Berks.
Doing the day job
NICoLA sturgeon was on tV the other evening, promising us that the virus will receive her undivided attention. I am sure that she means it, and it is reassuring to know.
It will also come as a relief to many, as, presumably, the constitutional question will not now be receiving her undivided attention — as it has been. WILLIAM BALLANTINE,
Bo’ness, West Lothian.
Down to earth
It HAs not taken airline operators long to request billions in financial aid from the Government.
While it would be a disaster to see companies fail and with it the loss of jobs, the Government should only offer loans, repayable in full when profits return and before any dividend payments can be made. NIGEL THOMAS, Newport, Gwent.