.. well the walls really but it didn’t scan as well

A while ago, I was mocking those poor deluded, spousely oppressed sops, whose weekend consisted of uncomplainingly opening paint tins before wasting many unhappy hours with a brush. Not for me this domestic drudgery, oh no, I was significantly too edgy and radical for such pointless pursuits. My life is far more windswept and interesting, with no time for DIY activities unless they specifically involve the violent application of dangerous power tools.

Yeah, right.

Actually doing stuff yourself on crumbling houses and dodgy outbuildings is apparently so last year. With my unerring ability to latch onto the coattails of a fading trend, the last two weeks have seen me swapping bikes and beer for trowels and paintbrushes. Frankly, it’s a bit of a worry.

The previous Saturday morning, I was happy slapping the virgin wood on the barn with sticky creosote almost before the dawn had cracked. The neighbours looked on in shocked, if slightly worried, admiration whispering of a possible alien abduction. By the end of the day, they were ready to call the police or Samaritans as my crazed painting extended to the muchly unloved shed, last painted when it was assembled as an Anderson shelter. Serial painting is clearly to be my crime this summer, as another Spring day passed by with me closeted in a sealed room with sandpaper, a tin of evil smelling chemicals and a bemused expression. And of course, a paintbrush; I am currently a man defined by his bristles.

All this has been painted 🙂

Since the barn resembles the entire Amazonian forest, chopped down and ready to be sanded, it’s unlikely things will improve for a while. If I don’t adopt a pretty radical lifestyle change, I’ll be Borg’d into the DIY tribe, understanding exactly what one can achieve with a Dremel and reciting the aisle names of all the major DIY stores as a party trick.

All this needs painting 🙁

Make it stop. I’m starting to become obsessed.

As an aside, I’ve decided to rename my kids Random” and Verbal”. Random (5) is just not wired up correctly even when comparing her to the mass neurosis that affects almost all of her age group. We’ll be having a conversation about, say, what she would like for tea and she’ll tip her head on it’s side, adopt a look of mental constipation before uttering some bon mot such as I want to be a duck when I grow up“. I don’t remember dropping her head first onto concrete when she was younger but maybe¦.

Verbal (7) likes to talk. This is entirely different to having a conversation. She doesn’t need a conversational partner, she just needs an audience. Or, to use a better word, Victim. The only guaranteed way to shut her up are to stuff the offending orifice with ice cream or if that fails, bring out the big guns “ Grandma. A women who has an endless reel of anecdotes spanning some seventy years most of which I’ve only heard 50 or 60 times. She doesn’t even need an audience, just the occasional grunt to show you’re still alive. Running on strong tea and memories, she’s more than a match for the seven year old who is soon reduced to that catatonic state which, normally, only Children’s TV can engender.

This, I think is my problem. Surrounded by girls and women, none of whom I pretend to understand is clearly messing with my little mind. While I toiled in toxic fumes on a dull job that absolutely has to be done right now, my wife spent the day knocking down old gates and removing knackered locks and fittings just in case we might need them sometime”. What the hell for? Are we expecting a surge in the second hand shit lock market anytime soon?“

I think I need a beer. Giving up coffee, sugar and beer doesn’t make you live longer. It just seems that way.

You may well ask. On leaving the building this evening, the comically obscene weight of my messenger bag made me think I’d probably taken it with me. In line with the universal rule of nothing ever being big enough (M25, Overdrafts, er you can guess the rest), the voluminous sack into which I courier my life is overflowing with random stuff. For example:

• Waterproof
  Spare waterproof
  Fleece (yes I appreciate I am little overlayered for the current weather but once you’ve frozen irreplaceable extremities during a March snow storm, paranoia sets it)
  Inner Tube
  Spare Inner Tube
  Pump with Co2 Canister
  Spare Co2 Canister
  Sufficient tools to play the toolbox in the A team
  Laptop, PDA and other assorted but rarely used electronics
  Apples, Gel Packs, Unidentified squelshy forgotten fruit
  Emergency squirrel.

I think you get the idea. It’s a nattily upholstered wardrobe being ferried the thick end of twenty miles a day. I wouldn’t care if I actually used any of it but the pump instructions have mated with the fermenting fruit and the tools appear to have been selected on their total inappropriateness for fixing anything on either bike. I dunno who I’m kidding “ if anything broke from a puncture upwards, I’d just find a bike shop or abandon it in the hedge and buy a new one.

But my shoulders are now of mismatched heights and without the bag attached, I find myself still compensating for the weight and walking round in confused circles. So it’ time for a spot of ruthless life laundry except for the fleece and the waterproof and maybe the inner tube¦ my friends Mark and Ruth have embarked on a two season tour of Europe with significantly less stuff. Still bet they wished they’d packed that squirrel just in case.

The diet goes on. I nearly baulked at the thin water based gruel this morning especially as a pile of cooked bacon was riding shotgun on the next table. Maybe I just need to spice it up through the addition of a shot of vodka or a dead badger. Trust me, nothing could make it taste any worse.

Five days without beer. The face that I’m counting them is fairly conclusive proof of a possible dependency. And on days as warm and sticky as this, wouldn’t it be great to ride home, slam the fridge door open and grab a super chilled beer? Still I’m sure a lovely lime cordial will taste almost as good.

The Strawberry milkshakes are back! Yes it appears the power of the “little guy” has been undiluted by faceless corporations serially not giving a shit. It can only be my irritated yet superbly argued fifteen page e-mail that has reversed the ludicrous policy which gave us “wild cherry”.

Sadly, this week I can’t have one. I dribbled like one of Pavlov’s hounds when it became apparent that the sugary feast that features in almost no diet books was back on the menu. But no, slapped as ever by the fickle fingers of fate, even this small pleasure will be denied me. Worse still, a rigid moratorium on both beer and coffee extends to that endless horizon called the weekend – BEER AND COFFEE. Is this fair? No, of course it isn’t. I am wondering who to complain to.

I’d like to say that after two caffeine and lager free days, I feel refreshed and detox’d. But no, actually I feel a bit like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. No wonder sober people look so bloody miserable. And until today I never realised I was a ‘fruitest’ but on examining the grocers shop masquerading as my desk, I couldn’t help but whimper “but where’s the bacon sandwich? Is it behind the Orange? No, and how couldn’t I have bought all this stuff whilst stone cold sober? I don’t even know what a sodding komquat is never mind exactly what you’re meant to do with it“.

Maybe later, I’ll try and explain what has brought all this on. However, the kettle has boiled and I’ve a lovely speciality tea waiting for me. It’s probably plum and arsehair or something. I now know how heroin addicts feel when being weened off onto methadone.

But am I grumpy? No coffee, no beer, no prospect of either for a few days. Take a wild bloody guess.

While a splitters group of my riding friends are gallivanting on dusty trails over almost mountains in sunny Scotland, I’ve been carelessly abandoned to a weekend of gardening. Worse still, its my own fault; I actually volunteered in a moment of misplaced family loyalty that came right out of left field. Not like me to actually behave like a normal husband and father, rather than an ageing and selfish juvenile delinquent. I am suspicious that this moment of madness can only have been brought on by alien abduction or a long history of alcohol abuse. Scratch the UFO theory then.

Continue reading “Gardening “ The scourge of the drinking classes.” →