DIY

There are some things at which I am pretty good. I'm not going to try and list them just in case there aren't as many as I'd like to think but, if I did do that, one thing that wouldn't appear on the list is DIY. I'm rubbish at it. I remember when my first wife and I moved into Underley Home Farmhouse in, I think, 1992 and I put up five shelves in a recess in the living room: the fourth and fifth ones were rock solid but the first one wouldn't take the weight of a tissue*.

But some people are ACE at doing stuff like that and so I think it always makes sense to employ them to do it. It's win-win as far as I can see. However, it gets a bit more troublesome when the person who is great at DIY is the Minx and she is bringing those skills to the house. 

Last time she painted one of the rooms, with the aid of the miniMinx, I was at work, so that was all well and good. Today, she came up to paint the kitchen. And I was going to be at home.

So, I had a bit of a chat with myself, accepted that I was going to be doing some painting, and joined in as enthusiastically as I could from the start. The Minx did the edging in (is that right?) and I set about the ceiling with the roller. And do you know what, I think I did OK. I expect her experience as an artist has given her the patience to do the small fiddly bits but I was OK doing the ceiling. 

But then, when we came to consider applying the second coat, the Minx (very gently) made it clear that when all was said and done, this was a one woman job and no place for faux enthusiastic amateur. So, while she carried on with the painting, I sat in the kitchen with her, chatting and writing, and fetching the occasional beverage, and it ended up being a job well done. And everybody happy :-)

*This is only a mild exaggeration. It was in fact a box of tissues that we put on it that brought it down.  

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Reading: ‘A History Of Seven Killings’ by Marlon James