Tuesday 12 October 2010

Time Off



The Bob Blog

He’s getting bigger.


Other Stuff...

What else has been happening? I’m on holiday this week catching up with my reading and writing. Makes me sound like the class dunce, innit?

Also got a man in to do some work around the house, cos I’m hapless, clueless and lots of other kinds of “less” when it comes to DIY. My ex used to laugh at me (note the “at” part of this sentence) whenever I had a screwdriver in my hand – and no, that’s not a euphemism – she said I turned from mild-mannered Clark Kent kinda guy into The Hulk.

No, seriously I would go into a RAGE. And curse like a character from an Irvine Welsh novel. I blame the parents.

So for the good of my blood pressure and for the sanity of my loved ones I no longer attempt anything that requires a tool in any shape that’s different than a laptop. Or a fork, knife and spoon. Or a TV remote.
The Queen of Chaos (my twin sister) recommended a handyman that she has been using . He came round today to do some bibs and bots. His first challenge was to remove a light fitting that has been bugging me since I moved in 4 years ago. It hangs from the ceiling and almost reaches the floor in a series of cream canvas boxes. An Ikea special if you will. It doesn’t work. It has never worked and I friggin’ hate the thing. But being me, it takes a while to get round to doing anything about it. I can hear all of the women reading this going, gawd I’d hate it if my husband was like that.

If he is, my advice: get over it and get a handyman in.

The old fella worked in electrics. Every time he comes over he looks at it and ask me if I have a pair of ladders. The answer of course is – is that shaped anything like a laptop? To be fair, the old fella is just the right side of five feet so he has the disadvantage of assessing where the light fitting connects to the ceiling from the vantage point of a hobbit.

Handyman guy looked at light fitting. He studied the top of the light fitting where it touched the ceiling. I say studied, he screwed his face up in thought and looked at it for about 5 seconds. Where the light fitting touches the ceiling it is shaped like an upside down cup. He twisted this cup thing ...and the whole apparatus lifted off in his hand. It took all of a second to remove.  And no wonder it didn’t work because it was attached to a metal hook. There was nothing even remotely resembling an electric wire anywhere in the vicinity.

Oh how we laughed.

The previous inhabitants of this house must have just liked it as a kind of a feature.

Eejits.

Anyway, who gives a monkey fart about DIY?  I have a giant TBR pile, a book and a shitload of poems to write.

Laters

6 comments:

  1. Absolutely! a ceiling ornament OR the previous tenants were spies and you just had the proof removed and laughed about it. And who cares, on to your reading and writing, eh?

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  2. I have the same rage issues. Every time I go to start trying, my wife clears her throat. I hang my head, sigh, and give her the tools.

    Because she's right. lol

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  3. absolutely, Marley! Who friggin' cares.

    Nevets, you've got to work to your strengths, dontcha! Thanks for following - I enjoy your blog tremendously.

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  4. oh, this was funny! the other day i went to the home depot because i needed a square screw for the handle on my screen door. thought i could handle this job easily. it's just a screw. so the guy asks me if i brought in the handle. no. well, there are a zillion sizes of them. so he takes off the handle that's on the display model of same door,gives me that screw, then sends me to the screw dept. (if only it were that easy, right?)after making me promise to bring the screw right back. so i hand the screw to the guy and he finds me a match. as he hands the original screw back to me he drops it. the one I promised to bring right back. and we can't find it anywhere. and let me just say that under that warehouse rack shelving, there's a lot of loose screws and dust bunnies. i guess it went the same way my meatball did when rolled off the table and out the door. so then i told him HE had to go and tell the other guy what happened to the screw. bottom line, i never knew how much screwing...up goes on at home depot!

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  5. All of that for a screw, Thea. Meatballs and screws! They're just like socks.

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  6. What a wonderful world you inhabit, young man - where anything functional has to be shaped like a laptop.

    My DIY problem is that I'm OK at it, but whatever I make, construct or wire up, my wife is called to admire it and invariably says 'why don't those two bits match?' or 'it's a funny colour' or makes some other allusion to its perceived imperfections. I'm a martyr, I tell you.

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