Downy down down

I didn’t sleep well and the prospect of assing around with windows until beyond the UK election filled me with gloom. The return of sunlight just seemed to expose everything I had missed and/or skated over in my corner-cutting bodgery in this land of artisanal - at a hefty price - perfection.

Back in the day when I languished in the School of Management at UMIST I did some comparative work on home-owning and house buying in the UK and Italy. In the UK people buy houses with an eye to investment and moving up the value chain. In Italy people buy a house for life. Second home ownership is also very high. So people spend a lot on making their house just right.

In the UK home improvement is a more flexible concept and DIY is widespread. Of course the UK abounds in good builders etc but there seems to just be greater latitude and less adherence to orthodoxy than in Italy.

The woman up the road who cares for my chainsaw said pointedly on one visit, when not mocking me about either Brexit or Boh-reese, ‘Once you’ve got the builders in you can never get rid of them.’

Builders, not unnaturally, set the bar very high. And every time it rains the Boss and I marvel at the beauty and soundness of our new roof.

But one’s DIY efforts have a lot to live up to. As we prepare to at least plan Phase 2 on our works programme I’ve internalised that high bar on which, as Scully in Brooklyn 99 (NINE NINE!) might have put it, I chafe my crack daily while not having the skills, patience or sheer grit to reach the vaunted heights of inter-generational building skill, nouse and budgeting.

But I did start varnishing today and got six windows done before the light faded. While still wet they looked rather like where I’d started months (?!) ago.

At one point I went to look for my trusty window scraper in a distant shed and noticed this lovely array of Downy Oak - Rovere - leaves. Perhaps I should just press them into the wet varnish and make the house disappear into its surrounding forest. The builders would never find us.