Superglue – Getting On

DIY tasks do not come simpler than hanging roller blinds: there could not be an easier job for a lazy Sunday morning…

…Step one: go online and find the fitting instructions. Gone are the days of finding a small piece of multi-lingually printed paper in the box. Today, things are much more efficient and feature nothing more than a four-hour online search to find the customised manufacturer’s instructions for fitting your blind which, on closer inspection, turn out to be a wiring diagram for a foot-spa… in Portuguese.

Step two, turn to Youtube tutorial and spend several hours distracted by surfboarding cats…

Open first box to find that blind has left handed control and right handed brackets. Youtube says that this is normal and easily remedied. It is 50% correct. It is definitely normal for things to be wrong. No to worry, correction takes little more than thirty minutes – six hours if you include the trip to A&E – and is barely noticeable if you do not look. Once done, it is but the work of a moment to reverse all of the remaining instructions in your head… or some of them. There is always one that slips through. It is referred to on the instruction video as ‘the one measurement you must not get wrong.’ Not to worry, correcting the error will take no more than three days for a competent builder.

According to the online tutorial the brackets can be fitted to the window itself (they can’t – it has decorative mouldings) to the sides of the recess (they can’t – the holes are far too close to the corner to get the drill in) or to the top of the recess (which consists of a single layer of plasterboard, the depth of which is considerably less than either screw or wallplug). The only practical option appears to be to shorten both plug and screw, hang the blind on the top and wait for it to fall down. Looking at it now, I don’t think it will take long.

Still, not to worry…

I have shelves in this house that I would never walk under – even though they do not have a chain on them that I have to pull every day and they do not hang perilously from screws that will not tighten in plugs that just spin within the decaying plasterboard drillholes. I’m sure that somebody must know how to properly hang blinds, but they’ve never been able to show me. The manufacturer’s website tells me (and I can do little but agree with it) that, if unsure, I should have opted for the ‘no-drill blinds’. When these that I do have (which they were quite happy to sell me) begin to slacken I will employ my own ‘six inch masonry nail’ hanging method – just as soon as someone can show me how to get the bloody things through the lintels.

I am calm nonetheless: they are only window blinds. I choose not to worry about them. I have so much more to trouble me. I could fret about the kitchen light that has taken to flickering each time it is turned on and the tap that drips like… well, a dripping tap if I’m honest. There is more than enough to worry about in this house, but I refuse to let it get me down. Most of it is in the kitchen and the builders are about to beat the shit out of that. It deserves it.

When DIY first raises its ugly head, it is usually ‘man versus house’, but once the job has begun it becomes ‘man versus a whole range of sharp, pointy and electrified implements of self harm’. Raising the garage door is like throwing open the portal to a mediaeval torture chamber: there is not a single implement in there that I have not, at some time or another, impaled myself upon. I look at my little plastic box of electrical gewgaws and reflect upon the fact that I have electrocuted myself so many times I find it difficult to believe that I have not yet developed superpowers.

My dad always told me that you are less likely to cut yourself with sharp tools. I once had chisels that, at worst, would give you a nasty bruise. I sharpened them (thanks dad!) and now they are more than capable of turning me into walking Carpaccio. I have sawed (sawn?) ragged gouges into my flesh more often than I would care to mention and I have even managed to drive a screwdriver right through my hand – in almost exactly the same place as I previously pierced myself with an electric drill. I steadfastly refuse to change the blade in my Stanley knife because, frankly, as things stand there is more chance of accidentally cutting myself with the handle.

As I write this – and against all expectations – the blinds remain exactly where I left them, although to date, no-one has dared to tug on the little chain that unrolls them, and my daughter has just reported that two of her own blinds, fitted by their previous occupant, have fallen down overnight. I told her not to worry, I’ve got boxes full of six inch masonry nails in the garage. She laughed. She is a much more accomplished DIY’er than myself – and besides, she has just bought a new tube of Superglue…

Envoi: they were, my wife assures me, actually fitted back to front, so I turned them around and all is well – except that in order to make the ‘blackout blinds’ accord with the Trades descriptions Act, I now have to fix them to the window frame with gaffer tape. Still, not to worry…

I have this finger-nail (right hand, middle finger, since you ask) and it has the ongoing habit of splitting from centre tip to centre quick (and, again, since you ask, yes it is both bloody painful and bloody annoying). It has been maintained during the last two or three years with the regular application of superglue and micropore but, in this way, I am merely able to cover, not mend, the crack. Very occasionally, the split grows out and when I trim the nail it comes off in one piece instead of two. For a short while it then looks like any other nail on any other hand – except that it still has a thin white line that spreads from top to bottom, along which it almost inevitably, re-splits.

It is my very own Catch 22: it splits because I catch it and I catch it because it splits. I suppose this tendency must have always been there, but lately it seems that repairs to the existing fabric have become increasingly futile.

So, it occurred to me that the answer might be to have the nail removed, with, I must admit, no real idea of how I might go about getting it done, and with an unpalatably high level of uncertainty as to what might be the eventual consequence of such an action. Jumping into anything with no real idea of how it might be achieved, nor what will be the eventual outcome, is never bright, is it? So, I should, of course, attempt to canvas opinion. But what if the general consensus is that complete removal would be the preferred option, even though nobody can explain to me how I might go about getting such a procedure performed, nor where this action may eventually take me finger-nail wise? Would my currently normally keratined hand become:
• Eternally four-nailed
• Eventually five-nailed – with four ‘normal’ and one malformed
• Eventually five-nailed – with four ‘normal’ and one that is, in some ill-defined sort of way, ‘different’
• Eventually five-nailed – with five ‘normal’ but with one of them still continually prone to splitting?

I must admit that, having spoken to others, I have been surprised by the passions stirred by the fate of my splitting nail and even more by how quickly concerns move on from my simple finger-nail dilemma to all manner of associated keratinous anxieties. Arguments have raged in various increments of rancour, from finger-nail splits, through general finger-nail woes, to common toe-nail maladies, on to all manner of podiatric ailments and eventually, through some unknown conduit, onto ringworm. Every possible variantial hypothesis has been pondered whilst the original nub has become side-lined and ignored. The question of the split in my finger-nail and the possibility of its imminent removal from its integral digit, it seems, can only be resolved consequent upon detailed discussion of the advisability of treating Dhobi’s Itch with Tea Tree Oil.

Meanwhile, the split continues to develop. I fear that, even when the ongoing finger-nail situation is resolved (by summary removal; by considered expurgation after firm assurances of satisfactory re-growth or by the miraculous discovery and application of some alternative remedy that negates the need for removal and reverses the division with no adverse reactions vis-à-vis the rest of the hand) I will never feel the same again about my middle finger. It will be somehow different to the rest of my digits, but no longer in a way that might be celebrated. Having flagged it’s disaffection to the other fingers, it will be forever treated with indifference by Peter Pointer, Pinkie and Index Finger: everlastingly reminded it of its own tendency to general flakiness – well, that’s the way it works in my mind anyway.

So, if I possibly can, I’d really like to keep my nail. I’d like to keep my hand pretty much as it is today. I’d like all of my fingers to work together without the fear that one of them might start to react differently when faced with the prospect of being e.g. trapped in a kitchen drawer. That getting cold or getting hot will not provoke it to down tools and consequently drop the whisky tumbler. I can’t continue glueing over the crack, but I also would not consider extraction without at least some assurance that it is all going to work out well in the long run. In any case, I need to do something soon. It’s been dragging on for so long now. The days of twiddling my thumbs must soon come to an end.

If ANYONE has a solution at their fingertips, I would be thrilled to hear it.

Tag: Superglue

Not to Worry

The Issue of My Splitting Finger-Nail (make of it what you will)