My DIY efforts are shot down in flames by smug neighbour next door
0 Comments | Sunday Mercury (Birmingham, England), May 16, 2010
Byline: MIKE LOCKLEY
MY NEIGHBOUR ‘relaxes’ through DIY, which he possibly possesses some kind of world title for: probably knocked up the trophy himself.
He’s built a shed, dug the footings for a new conservatory and tiled the bathroom.
God knows what he’ll do this afternoon.
I don’t think it’s natural for a middleaged man to possess such vim, and I demand a drug test.
If it proves positive, he should be banned from putting up a shelf for at least five years.
I, on the other hand, cannot change a plug.
He’s got a battery of tools at his disposal, I’ve got a Swiss army knife. I can’t unblock our sink, but should a pony limp into the kitchen needing a pebble removing from its hoof… In the early years of wedded bliss, my wife, believing she married a handyman, left me ‘to do’ lists. Then she realised the cost of cleaning up the carnage I created far outweighed the money saved by not calling in professionals.
In exasperation, she has called upon the help of him-next-door. This hurts and makes me feel emasculated.
Whisper it, but I’d be more comfortable discovering him in a clinch with my wife than walking in while he bleeds the radiator: at least I know how to do the former. In a fit of pique, I’ve taken to bellowing through our bedroom window: ‘It’s not straight’ while he toils with a spirit level in his garden, then ducking out of sight. Childish, but it works: last week he tore down a wall three times.
When I do attempt the most rudimentary job, he watches, sensing danger, from the other side of the fence.
“It’s on fire,” he yelled as I breezed up and down our modest lawn with the new sit-upon mower.
It was, too, with clouds of acrid smoke bellowing from the over-heated appliance.
“Let go of it,” he pleaded. I did and the thing plummeted into our rockery like a downed Lancaster bomber.
“How the hell did you do that?” he asked, scratching his head as the machine smouldered.
This is the most irksome in a series of ‘how the hell did you do that?’ questions: how the hell did you not see the sign telling you the car needed oil? How the hell did you not know you had to switch the water off before fixing the ballcock..
pebble tile