Another windy night in Idle – okay not exactly the same as A Rainy Night in Georgia…cue Randy Crawford – and time again to roll back the curtains with trepidation in order to find out what was left standing of my flyaway greenhouse and to try track down which pieces were in which neighbour’s garden. Such is the frequency of these calamities I am seriously tempted to see if the suppliers do GPS tracking for their greenhouse panels and installing a ladder for my frequent vaults over the wall into the back snicket. In truth last Wednesday was far worse with around half a dozen panels scattered across several gardens but I was very grateful for whoever weighted down a panel found in the snicket with a few bricks…perhaps that’s the answer for the greenhouse…note to supplier.
Of course each disaster requires remedial DIY for which I am noteworthy, indeed almost legendary for being spectacularly crap at. We all have certain talents and despite my Dad being a highly skilled engineer and Our Kid a dab hand at anything practical, eldest son should never have been allowed near Metal & Woodwork classes years ago at St George’sMiddle School. It was here as a class we had to make a wooden toast rack with smooth planed edges and a neat metal rack. Mine looks like it was crushed into shape and has the metal bits sticking out of the sides with splinters for good measure. Strangely my mum keeps it on her mantelpiece probably as a reminder never to ask me to do anything that requires a hint of practical ability.
DIY Time
When I left home for my very own bijou house – damp, smoke infested back to back slum in Bradford – like all new house owners I tried to put my stamp on the property and resolved to save money by doing as much of the work as I could…which was a fairly restricted list in truth. My early attempts to strip the nicotine infested wall paper – dear old Vera who I bought this house from was a rocking chair mounted smoke machine – confused me a touch as each strip seemed to bring more of the wall down. Surely that hairy tosser with the frilly cuffed shirts never went through all this. By the first day I was like a coal miner and this house was going to need more that a roll or two of wood-chip. Luckily my girlfriend’s dad at the time was a builder and plasterer and although the relationship was more fragile than the house it seemed to make sense to tough it out a few months…at least till the plaster had dried.
When it came to painting the virgin walls again my self-belief was still unshakable. Given that this was a back to back the fact that it took me a week to paint the living room suggested a career as a decorator may not be an option and asset finance would take less toll on the body. When my pal, John the Gasman, dropped by he took one look at the empty paint trays and asked of I had painted the whole street. There was simply no need to suggest that I had used that much paint that the room had shrunk by several cubic metres. It was dawning on me quickly that DIY as an attempt at economising is complete bollocks as however much a decorator would have charged me would have more than been recovered in saved paint. Time to put the brushes in the bin.
Sub-contracting at the Villas
There was more evidence of my ineptitude at the local cricket club where precision mattered more so especially for one allotted task of drilling holes into various walls as I was helping with the new building which was to be our clubhouse. Eventually I managed to make a few holes in various walls only for it to be pointed out that, although not the worst job it would have been much better had the holes been through the right walls. To compound this I was tasked with infilling the holes which again I did with zest until it was pointed out that sand has a purpose and neat cement was not the preferred mix.
And so from those early days I decided that DIY was not something I would ever master and that paying somebody else made great sense as this was indeed, trickle down economics of sorts. However, with my new found freedom recently I resolved to try again so much so that I decided to buy a drill. What for I honestly could not tell you but there I was in B&Q looking glazed at row after row of combi, hammer, cordless and other variants of drills. I stood there that long the security guard went off to make me a cup of tea and then it dawned on me that I needed 4 holes drilling in the garage and that was it. Total cost was looking like £30 a hole…time to sack the drill and give Our Kid a ring.
It’s Just a Toothpaste Tube… Surely?
Back to the greenhouse and when it first blew to smithereens last year the supplier helpfully suggested I use sealant to secure the panels back down…once I had found them. So I went to one of the local DIY sheds which is really the blind being led and then fleeced by the blind as the assistants generally have less idea than even idiots like me. I tell you so starved will we be of people with practical ability in future years knowing how to operate a drill or a jig-saw will be tantamount to having an IT degree. What’s the point in thousands of kids with useless degrees out there when what we really need is somebody to explain what self-tapping means and demonstrate how not to lose your fingers in the process.
So I bought the sealant and the gun too reasoning that £5 for the gun was far better than borrowing my Dad’s and therefore having to ask how it worked…which they don’t actually tell you in the store…largely because you are too embarrassed to ask. Back home I chopped off the end and started to pump like I had never pumped before. Hell I could have pumped up both tyres on my bike and, with sweat dropping off my brow…nothing. And then it all started to explode like a relentless sea of slime from the wrong end and suddenly it dawned on me that I might have chopped the end off but, like taking the cap off a toothpaste tube, you still need to prick the tube itself. There was only one prick I had in mind and was I a mighty stupid one but at least this dawning had saved me storming back to the DIY shed to lambast their product.
Having endured several storms now at least I thought I could say that I was now a master of the sealant gun, well at least by the time Jason across the road had showed me how to get the locked tube out of the gun when it was finished. That was until yesterday when I decided to reach for the gun again and use what was left of the sealant to try to secure another panel. By now there was probably more sealant on my greenhouse than the Olympic swimming pool so what harm could a bit more do? Obviously I had to clear the nozzle and when this did not work I decided to use a sharp pricking tool…you know what’s coming…rammed it in too hard and out it flew into my hand with blood spurting all over the place. It was this final act of an imbecile that convinced me never to ever go near a DIY shed ever again even if I had to keep Our Kid swimming in wine. Roll on summer assuming any sun will be able to penetrate the sealant house.
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