Knowing When to Stop

…In which I tentatively dip my toes back into this big wonderful blogoverse…

As the building work has progressed I have found any number of little things that to my eyes do not appear to be quite right and which, thanks to my almost total inability to leave well alone, I have since managed to make immeasurably worse.  Door doesn’t close quite as I think it should?  No problem, slight adjustment, I can do that.  So I do and now it doesn’t close at all.  Or open.  Surely that pipe just needs… erh, does anyone know where the stop tap is?  Why is that electric socket wonky?  No problem, I’ll just take it off the wall and… ‘Hello doctor.  Exactly how long have I been unconscious?’  It is something I must address.

There are many things that I have discovered about myself over the last few weeks – principal among them: I am not as young as once I was.  I had no idea that I even possessed this number of areas in which it is possible to ache.  Having raised two children, I had no idea it was possible to feel this tired.  My day begins at 6am so that I can be ready for the arrival of the builders, and finishes somewhere between 8 and 9pm having cleaned up after them and carried out all of the daily tasks I was unable to do whilst they were there.

The builders are not here at weekends, but fear not, I am awake just as early because, as my wife gleefully points out, we have only two days to fit in our between tradesmen tasks; chief among them slopping paint onto every conceivable surface: I had no idea there were so many types of emulsion.  Nor did I know that so many people hold such strong, and divergent, opinions on the correct water/paint ratio for a mist coat on new plaster.  I went for 30/70 but, if I’m honest, the measurements did become rather more slapdash as the day ground on and, in any case, the resulting mixture always appeared to congeal like school custard throughout its period of use.

Fortunately my ‘patience threshold’ has actually improved over the years.  I do not get nearly as frustrated by things, people and, crucially, myself as I used to do.  ‘Things’ cannot help it.  They are just things.  They have no sentient existence, they are manufactured or appropriated for a purpose that they either fulfil or fail and whichever way it goes, I now realise that I should feel grateful to make it through with all ten fingers.  People have their own problems – I could well be among them – and their own ‘things’ to contend with.  The biggest problem I pose for myself is knowing when to stop.

Ironically, my problem is not in knowing when not to start: I am more than happy to cast my eye over something and say, ‘No, I can’t do that.’  Knowing my own limitations greatly enhances my admiration for those who do not have them.  But when I decide that I can do something and events (as they inevitably do) conspire to prove me wrong, I have a complete inability to let it go.  Somehow I just don’t know how to give in.  …And it’s not failure itself that is a problem for me.  Lord knows I’m familiar enough with that.  It is the depth of my own ineptitude that drives me on.  When I can’t understand why I am unable to do something, I will bloody well keep trying until I can – even if disaster lurks around every corner.

Screwing up a shelf is easy work: really screwing it up is the job of an expert.  Replastering the aftermath can be how hard?  I’ve seen people do it.  It looks so easy… mind you, they don’t have a wonky shelf set against a wall that looks like it has been created for a re-enactment of Paschendale.  I do.  I have suggested to my wife that I can make it better, but she is unconvinced to the point of threatening divorce.  She will ‘get somebody in’ and I know that she is right, they will do all they can to make it as close to perfect as possible… and there’s the problem.  There is bound to be just that 0.01% that could do with just a little restorative attention.  And we all know where that leads…