I have recently staggered past my 66th birthday, making me – in this country at least – officially a pensioner and so moving into a bungalow seems to be both natural progression and dauntingly ageing.
The move comes with a plethora of ‘jobs’ far better suited to a much younger and better man than I but, you know what it’s like, you have to at least try before you fail. By and large I am barred from all but the most elementary electrical repairs and my wife would much sooner drown than let me within a spanner’s length of plumbing, but pretty much everything else is up for grabs. I have lived in an old, traditionally built house for forty-plus years, I know all about hanging shelves in those, but dry-lined walls present me with a whole new challenge. Drill a long narrow hole and hammer a long, fat plug into it seems to be the way, but the non-tightening screw scenario has become the norm; the small plug within a large one my extremely amateur solution. I spend my life asking ‘do you think that shelf is sagging?’ and attempting to work out exactly what it is strong enough to support. Anything with a weight above ethereal must sit directly over the bracket and not in a position where the inevitable collapse would lead to the decapitation of a grandchild.
I have never encountered a building with so much buried metal: cables that are not where they should be; pipes that run from nowhere to nowhere; unidentified ferric lumps wherever I try to drill. I fear that this house may well have been originally built from Meccano. My drill bits have a near-fatal attraction to it. Mirror/photo/picture hanging, at least, features only a hammer and, in some form or another, a nail. The resulting damage is equally catastrophic, but at least it’s all over quickly…
And now I’m looking down the wrong end of a paint brush and a lifetime of painting and decorating. I am filling the hundreds of redundant holes I have drilled and sanding down with abandon (I’ve run out of sandpaper). On the TV this process leaves an unblemished surface. In my house it appears as if the walls have tumours. I don’t use textured pain on inside walls, it just looks like it. At least my emulsion skills are not as meagre as my glossing capabilities. I can turn a perfectly flat expanse of wood into a ploughed field with a single stroke of my rapidly balding brush. The paint does not so much dry as coagulate. What I am left with is basically a shiny scab – that’s when the paint bothers to dry at all. Often it just sits there like a disconsolate teenager, belligerently refusing to submit to its chemical imperative, clinging onto the very last vestiges of oleaginous existence. No door in my house can be shoved without sticking to it, none can be closed without fusing it shut. All vertical surfaces carry drips that can be seen from space.
And I defy anyone to blame lack of effort on my part: I really do try. Sheer incompetence lies at the root of my glossing woes. I have tried ‘taking my time’, watching the paint bond the brush to the door mid-stroke; I have tried to increase my speed and consequently splashed onto every solid surface between the doorframe and Jupiter. My attempts to improve the domestic environment seldom raise me above Genghis Khan.
I must admit that my toolkit probably leaves much to be desired. I have been known to use my trusty spirit level when installing curtain rails only to find that they are at such an angle as to render the curtains self-closing. I fear I must have a faulty bubble. I have a mitre block with which I can cut any angle between 45 and 90 degrees, but seldom twice. I have a dozen different types of screwdriver, but never the one I need to fit the screw. I have more hammers than you can shake a broken stick at. I am not the poor workman, but the tool that blames him…
Getting On 