DIY school

I'm never gonna be the handyman around the house my father was
So don't be asking me to hang a curtain rail for you, because
Screwdriver business just gets me confused
It takes me half an hour to change a fuse
And when I flicked the switch the lights all blew

I'm not your handyman

Don't be expecting me to put up shelves or build a garden shed
But I can write a song that tells the world how much I love you instead
I'm not any good at pottery so let's lose the 't' and just shift back the 'e'
And I'll find a way to make my poetry build a roof over our heads

I know it looks like I'm just reading the paper
But these ideas I'll turn to gold dust later
Cause I'm a writer not a decorator

I'm not your handyman.

  

(Billy Bragg, Handyman Blues)

I’ve always been a cack-hand when it's come to DIY. When it came to my options for GCSE I had a choice between resistant materials and food technology. This was the late 90’s when TV personality Jamie Oliver had yet to be invented. Hate on Oliver all you want, but he’s done a lot to make young men interested in cooking, defeminising what should be a chore/passion enjoyed by all. Even though cooking wasn’t cool for boys, I chose home economics. There was a risk in doing so I would be branded unmanly and gay – what, after all, says queer more than dicing an onion? However, I didn’t care. I’d risk the ridicule and taunts if it meant avoiding the hammer and the anvil. Surely, it better to work with co-operative materials like egg and sugar than resistant materials that were predisposed to make life harder.

Yes, he was behind Jamie's Dream School, but he got boys cooking.

I had experienced woodwork and metalwork in my early years. There was the free-standing letter rack that wouldn't stand. The initialised key ring that didn’t have the necessary curvature for the ‘r,’ meaning my name stood for ‘Lyan.’ Further, there was the whole debacle over my bird-box: the RSPB's argument that no bird should be allowed to nest in such conditions was upheld by my father who reluctantly pulled the thing down. I’ve just never had the nous, the knack for practical projects. I don’t have the dexterity to hold two things at once, nor can I visualise how things are supposed to turn out. All of this means I’m ill-suited to DIY.

Having recently moved into our own home, DIY can’t be avoided. If there’s a problem, I can’t throw up a distress flare to the estate agents and wait for help to arrive. As Spiderman’s uncle once said, ‘With a great mortgage comes great responsibility.’ Simply, you have to do it yourself, risk an arm and a leg; or call out someone and have it cost you one. Alternatively, you can do what I do: make the teas whilst your dad, girlfriend and her dad get on with the job. It's a method I’ve been trialling for the past year, and I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, it has been an unqualified success. It should be rolled out to ineffectual men across the country. The wallpapering’s been done, the curtain poles gone up, the garden’s been remodelled, the study has gone from resembling a burial ground to a lending library – and all this has been done with little or no input on my side.

But it can’t continue this way.

I can’t continue to pay off the dads in beers and thank you's. I can’t continue to offer a ‘sex voucher’ to The Girl in way of thanks – she neither values it nor wants it. I have to do better. Acutely aware of this, I scoured the Internet in search of a DIY course that would teach me the fundamentals, the basics, which would allow me to save face in front of the fathers and The Girl too. One that I found was the DIY Centre in Waddon, Surrey; a training school that offers intensive plastering, carpentry and tiling courses; more importantly though, one that provides a home maintenance course, designed with beginners in mind.

The centre is right next to the station, which means reaching it is practical.

So here I am outside Waddon early on a Saturday morning during the late nights and lay-ins of a summer holiday wondering, “how did I get here?” Dressed in old jeans, worn t-shirt and steel capped boots, I looked every inch the labouring man; however, my soft hands and spindly fingers tell the true story: I'm in costume, unfancy dress, playing a part that I'm unaccustomed to. The centre have their work cut out: they’d been in operation for ten years, but in that time they had never come toe to toe with such gross incompetence.

Welcoming us to the day was Martin, a genial man, tall and tattooed, with a face that said cue ball meets glasses. He introduced the day by asking us, “What’s the difference between a softwood and a hardwood?” Just as I was going to affect the voice of mean girl sarcasm, Martin told us it was nothing to do with strength but density. I had learnt something straightaway; although as introductions go it was a little unusual. Wasn’t he meant to say his name, put the learning objective on the board and give us the course outline? Ten years of writing four-part lesson plans has made me uptight when it comes to structure; I was concerned that my weekend would be spent working with something of a loose cannon, who’d tell me things I didn’t need to know at the expense of things I really needed to know.

In case you wanted to know.

Fortunately, Martin ended the pop quiz and got us onto measuring and drilling. Measuring I can do. I can convert inches to centimetres and millimetres into centimentres with no problem at all. Maths isn’t an issue. Putting the point where the hole must go is a walk in the park. What I hadn’t been entrusted with before is the drill. I learnt how the drill bit goes in and the drill bit went out. I was ready to Hokey Cokey. Applying pressure to the drill, I sunk it into the wood, and what do you know? A perfect circle. Now do the same on the other side? “Don’t mind if I do, Martin.” And wham! I’d struck gold yet again. Another perfect circle. In the world of drilling, I was putting the slick into oil. Then, we were told to apply our block to the wall. Now, this was a job that called for both hands: one to hold and the other to apply pressure. Years of eating with a knife and fork should have meant I was equipped for this, however this was not to be the case. When applying the drill to the screw, I went in at the wrong angle, causing the light-weight device to sound positively pneumatic, as if I was laying cable in Clapham as opposed to attaching wood in Waddon. Martin came over, telling me kindly that he never wanted to hear that noise again. I went in straighter, cleaner and more smoothly. He nodded, and I was reassured.

We then put up some plasterboard and were given a tutorial in painting. I haven’t painted since secondary school, where my teacher would often praise me on my ‘interesting’ use of colour. Resisting the desire for avant-garde experimentalism, I eschewed my predilection for Jackson Pollack innovation, in favour of conservative brushstrokes. On seeing my technique, Martin said I was laying it on a bit thick; I said, “When are you going to start doing that with me.” Ignoring the idiom, he told me to put less paint on the brush and generate a longer, more flowing action. By the end, the paint-job didn’t look too bad. Not up to a professional’s standard, yet passable. At the very least, I was learning.

Measured, drilled and painted.

Leaving the workshop, we headed next door for a spot of plumbing. Martin asked us, “Who here has ever had a leaking tap?” I swallowed the impulse to tell him about my bladder complaint and listened to what he had to say. "The most common problem with the leaking tap is the washer." Quickly, he then took the top off the tap, and then releasing the washer with a spanner demonstrated how a small disc can cause a significant problem. On changing the washer, Martin signed off with ‘Just Like That.’ This Tommy Cooper catchphrase would be said more than once over the weekend (67 times). Changing a washer was the easiest thing of the weekend. So easy I could do it. Martin said, “It will cost you 10p to fix that; you’d pay a £65 call-out, along with labour, if you got someone out.” Before plumbers even put their feet on your welcome mat it’s cost a pretty penny, so maybe I’ll save a few with this knowledge.

After this, we looked at how to fix a broken pipe flange, a task that involved me first asking what a flange was and then what it did. Having addressed the semantics, I got on with the practical, proving myself to be inept at fixing plumber’s tape around it. When it came to testing whether our contraptions would hold water, mine leaked like an incontinent. I told Martin it was important I demonstrate to the rest of the class what can happen if you don’t do it correctly. His look said, “Your toilet leaks water, but your mouth spews bullshit.”

Pipe flange.

The next morning Martin had us working on tiles. Having mounted a tile board, he instructed us to remove the adhesive with a blade and the grout with a something-or-other. It was tiring work, going up and down, across and side-to side, so laborious and repetitious that I might consider it as a detention task for next year. On completing this penal servitude, we were then told to file down the top tile, ready for disassemble. With hammer and chisel, Martin demonstrated how to remove a tile. Armed with the mighty mallet and ably assisted by its sidekick, I shot through and took out the thing in one fell swoop. Resistant materials, pah! Resistance was futile. Like David vs Goliath, the tile had looked at me with condescension: who is this spindly fingered weakling to think he can take me? Well, tile, I showed you. I wiped that smugness of your brow. Showed you that you shouldn’t underestimate the fee-fi-fo-fum of the Anglo-Asian. Unseamed you from the knave to the chops. Left you broken and desolate. (Sometimes it’s good to trash-talk the inanimate. The animate only answer back.)

Later in the day, we moved onto electrics. My dad is an engineer and has been working with electrical equipment for forty-five years. I’ve inherited my father’s impish smile, softness and determination, but what’s skipped generations is my way with wires and cables. I will one day inherit his kingdom, however I will never possess his talents. When it came to wiring a plug, it’s safe to say I was an omnishambles. I could put it down to the fact I have big hands -ladies- however, the truth is I’m just too clumsy and ham-fisted for such a task. An apt image to describe my plug wiring would be that of an amateur sex enthusiast: all hands, no direction, the plug left feeling unsatisfied, desperate for an expert's touch.

The gang with tall Martin in the middle.

The day ended with a certificate ceremony that authenticated the fact I had completed the course. Important wording that: ‘completed,’ not ‘passed.’ Certainly, I have come away with knowing more about DIY, understanding what different equipment does and practising my use of it. However, I still think I’ll always be a man that’ll be better at building narrative than flatpack; more adept at constructing sentences than sheds; more at ease with arranging words than flowerbeds. 

To my darling girl, don't fear though: if I can't hang you great scenes and pictures, I'll type and write them in imagery for you instead. I’ll try to be a better man, but when all's said and done I’m no handyman.