Dodgy DIY

As lockdown sets in, Olly Mann takes a leap out of his comfort zone

- Olly Mann

WHEN IT COMES to DIY, I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert. If, indeed, my skills were measured against comparable case studies, and ranked within a DIY-competency spectrum, I’d fall in the bottom one per cent. I’m the kind of guy who cuts his finger opening a packet of Kleenex.

Here’s the list of what I can comfortably do: hammer a nail, replace a battery, change a lightbulb. Here’s what I will do only reluctantly, hating myself for being so poor at it: assemble a chair, paint a wall, seal a bath, top-up car fluids. And here’s a sample of the epic inventory of tasks that compel me to get a man in: wiring a plug, erecting a fence, constructing large furniture, wallpapering, sink unblocking, shelf hanging… you get the idea.

Some chaps, I realise, would consider this situation so emasculating that they’d sign up for gender reassignment. But I have come to accept my predicament, consoling myself that I am accomplished at Other Things. I’m a right-brained dyspraxic, with little interest in engineering, I have zero sense of direction, I process information audially rather than visually, I’m atrocious at sport, I have never done any kind of manual labour and I get frustrated quickly. It’s hardly surprising that DIY is not my forte.

Besides, my deployment of local handymen, painter-decorators, repairers and restorers supports a diaspora of self-employed geezers.