My Dearly Beloved and I are decorating the kitchen, well, she is supervising and I'm doing all the work. She decided we needed some new worktops so we picked out some elegant and stylish black ones and had them delivered. I have always done this kind of work myself as I'm too tight to fork out for a proper tradesman to do something I can manage. It's not difficult if you apply a little thought and planning. 'Why don't you get someone in to do it?' said my youngest son. 'It's easy peasey' I said, 'just whip the old ones off and stick the new ones on'. It turned out to be a very good question.
Just as in true love, the course of DIY never runs smooth. I had some nerve racking moments cutting the worktop but it all went to plan. The problem began when I realised the new worktop was considerably thicker than the old one, clearly neither as thick as I am. This meant there was a 15mm gap between the taps and the feeder pipes, disaster. I had to rush down B&Q and buy up half the plumbing department trying to find something that would bridge the gap. Then I had to go back down again when I discovered I didn't have the correct washers to prevent the water from the newly connected taps flooding the floor. I bought every type of washer in the shop to ensure I had the correct ones. In the old days you only had two sizes to worry about, now there seems to be a whole range of washers and fitments of different types and sizes for all sorts of different reasons which is fine if you know what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I don't. What was that I said about thought and planning?
I was hoping to have it finished by 4PM; I finally finished it at 8:30PM. It was too late to cook so we went out for a pub dinner to appease the hungry family. With the cost of the dinner, extra plumbing supplies, the increased anxiety levels and factoring in a day lost, I could probably have paid for someone to fit the damn thing.
My previous DIY efforts have been generally successful. There have been some memorable moments like the time I put a screw through a gas pipe trying to re-route a TV cable and the time I had to remove all the tiles from a wall I had just put on. I spent the day of Lady Diana's funeral ripping out an illegal loft room only to put it back in after the surveyor had been; all with the consent of the buyer of course. My children have learnt most of their swearwords from my DIY antics.
You will be pleased to know that the worktops are in place now and looking particularly fine but my son definitely has a point, it's questionable how much money I save. I don't need the aggravation these days and I don't do enough of it to keep up with the latest techniques and advances. However, there is a sense of pride in doing it yourself. It's possible to do a professional(ish) job without relying on some cowboy builder who could potentially mess it up or take forever to complete the job. The next project is tiling the kitchen floor and I will be obtaining some quotes for it. On the other hand...
I was talking to one of my young colleagues the other day and she was telling me that she was creating a bucket list because, as she put it, you never know. Amongst the usual things such as sky-diving and travelling to exotic lands, she has a hankering to own a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes. She has a jar which she is intending to fill with two-pound coins, when it is full, she will have the necessary £500 to buy them. 'How much?' said I, choking on my coffee.
I wouldn't spend £100 on a pair of shoes, never mind £500, I couldn't justify it to myself. You can argue all day long about the benefits of buying expensively such as quality and longevity but for most people money is an issue. Just because you are relatively well healed doesn't necessarily mean you can afford a Lamborghini.
However, like my friend and her desire for fancy shoes, most of us have a material 'holy grail' for which we would possibly sell a granny to acquire. In my particular case I was extremely lucky. My wonderful children chipped in and bought me the guitar of my dreams for a significant birthday. I would never have been able to justify the cost as there is always something more pressing to spend my money on so I would probably have gone without. I don't need it but I'm unreasonably proud of it.
My Dearly Beloved has spent an eye-watering amount of her Christmas and birthday money on some top of the range make up, so eye-watering she won't disclose exactly how much. Now I have to walk the thin line of commenting how nice she looks in her new slap without implying she looks less lovely without it. It's very tricky and fraught with danger. For her it's worth the expense, but I clearly can't agree.
So the question is, what unnecessary, materialistic and lavish self-indulgence would you sell your granny or break the bank for? £1000 on a golf club, £700 on a single camera lens? Not for me but I bet I know people who would.
What a depressing month January is; five weeks of cold, wet weather in the aftermath of the Christmas festivities. The only advantage to the long, dark nights is that the grey, overcast days are short. Of the twelve months of the year it has the least to say for itself. If it was one of the twelve disciples it would be Judas, if it was one of the twelve days of Christmas it would be the 'lords a leaping'. Let's face it, who needs ten members of the aristocracy dancing about in their living room.
The first of January is such a dismal way start to the new year. You make your New Year's resolutions in the positive, upbeat atmosphere of Christmas adamant the coming year is going to be the best ever. Then, you are plunged into the dark and cold of bleak mid-winter when all you want to do is lock yourself indoors and comfort yourself with indulgence. It's no wonder that those that still bother with New Year's resolutions fall at the first hurdle.
If New Year's Day was in March it would be much better. Most of the sombre, gloomy days would be behind you and spring would be on the horizon. Surely your resolutions would stand a much better chance if you could see spring just round the corner with the promise of summer in the air. You would be leading with your best foot forward rather than taking a step backwards.
The knock on effect is that it would put January and February at the end of the year so my revised new year would look like this. The first of March is New Year's Day leading into spring in April where BST begins and we get the longer days, then May and June where spring has sprung and the beginning of summer and warmer temperatures. Then the Holiday season kicks in which you only have to wait five months for instead of seven. In October and November you can enjoy the crisp, autumnal days when it's still bright. December will be taken up with Christmas preparations. Now January is at the end of the year you can use up all the holiday entitlement you forgot to take which you currently have to squeeze in before Christmas. With a bit of careful planning you could book off virtually the whole of January and stay at home indulging yourself as a reward for another successful year. After your tranquil January you would coast sleepy-eyed through February which has the benefit of being the shortest month before starting the whole thing again.
Our antipodean cousins down-under already have their New Year in the summer. Perhaps that's why they seem so bloody cheerful all the time.
Do you feel like a second-class citizen in your own home? Is someone else getting the cream while you're getting the leftovers? Are you the king of your own particular castle or more like the handyman? If you feel that your loved one is pouring affection into another and leaving you out in the cold, I think I know what the problem is; your partner is a cat lover.
As you will be aware from my previous post 'War of Cat-trition' the furry fiend in our house is well aware of its lofty status and misses no opportunity to rub it in. I pay most of the bills and I feel it's time to redress the balance. I'm fed up going out to work every day to keep a roof over his bone-idle head while he dozes on my pillow soaking up my central heating. Enough is enough. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way so I'm proposing forming a self-help group to fight for the rights of cat lover's partner's everywhere. No longer shall we be downtrodden in our own homes.
At this time I feel we should engage in dialogue with our oppressors to voice our concerns and try and find some common ground. By displaying unity and resolve I think we can get the message across that we are not to be trifled with and our demands are serious. At this early stage I don't think it's necessary to engage in violent action or chain ourselves to railings but I'm not ruling anything out. However, if our members feel the need to dress up (as Batman or in drag for example) to display solidarity, that would be perfectly acceptable.
As yet, I have not devised a name for this group so I'll throw it open to the members to come up with some ideas. I am proposing that we organise a high profile march in the first instance to bring attention to our cause. The suggested route at this time is from my house to the pub. I appreciate it's only two minutes but I feel the impact of a 'short, sharp shock' approach will prove invaluable and generate considerable interest. I just need to check with the wife that it's okay and I'll get back to you with some dates.
Long live the revolution.
