Backchat
Tony Greenway

It is a truth universally acknowledged (to paraphrase Jane Austen) that I am to home-renovating what Jade Goody is to conversational French: I lack a certain amount of 'ooh-la-la' in the DIY department. Indeed, I am the only person I know who has been openly sniggered at by the 'greeter' at our local branch of B&Q.
Take the other day. I was standing on a chair putting up a curtain pole - not a tricky job, but I must have looked uncomfortable because my two-and-a-half year old daughter approached me with a deep frown, waggled her finger and told me sternly: "You be CAREFUL, Daddy."
Well, I'm sorry. But I'm not going to take health-and-safety lectures from someone who regularly gets her head stuck in her polo-neck jumper. Yet even she can see that this DIY lark is plainly not my bag.
So when the wife and I wanted to knock the wall down between our kitchen and sitting room (giving us that open-plan, loft-living look) I knew I'd have to call in the professionals; partly because I understood it to be a two-man job, but mainly because my wife pointed out that, if I even went near the wall with a sledgehammer, she would call the police.
We were installing a new kitchen, too, so that meant getting in a plumber; and we were having new lights, so that meant an - oh... whaddya call 'em? - electrician. For weeks, our house has been like an entire series of Changing Rooms - although thankfully minus Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen.
The plumber wore low-slung trousers, as plumbers tend to do: so we nicknamed him The Dark Lord Sauron (because every time he bent over the U-bend, we got a terrifying glimpse of his Crack of Doom). Once, as he was leaning over the sink, ratcheting up some pipework, he announced: "I'll have a look at your waste disposal unit in a minute."
"That's a coincidence," I said. "I've been trying not to look at yours all morning."
Plumbers, I soon discovered, don't have much in the way of a sense of humour.
The builders arrived and I showed them the wall I wanted knocking down - and they laughed to themselves a special builders' laugh that only builders can understand.
"Oh, deary, deary me, no," chortled Builder A (who was called, I kid you not, Bob), in the tone of voice I use to explain to my daughter why it's not a good idea to put hardened Playdo down the front of your trousers. "No. Can't be done. It's a supporting wall."
I explained that this was a touch on the inconvenient side, although I expressed it more succinctly in words which rhymed with 'Ducking Bell'.
"Can't you use a JCB?" I asked.
"I think you mean an RSJ," said Builder B. "And yes. We could, but it would cost you approximately £3000 more."
Ah. Who needs the open-plan, loft-living look, anyway?
But I wish I was better at this sort of thing because I would save myself an awful lot of money. And also - let's be honest - there is a certain macho pride in being able to do buildery, electriciany, plumbing-type things. Stop me if I'm getting too technical.
A photographer friend of mine - let's call him Jeremy Phillips - is such a DIY superman that he should wear a red cape and a blue bodystocking. Once he rewired his entire house, even though he had never attempted anything like it before. I asked him how he'd done it, and he said that it wasn't difficult and that he'd "got a book out of the library."
If I went home and told my wife that I was going to rewire the house using a book I'd found in the library, the first thing she would do is assume that I had been possessed by aliens. The second thing she would do is call her solicitor and initiate divorce proceedings. So I don't touch rewiring.
I also don't touch water (in a professional capacity, I mean). The last time I rang my brother, he was plumbing in a toilet using a book - that he had just got out of the library - as a reference guide (no: I have never, ever seen a How To Plumb In Your Toilet book at my local library, either. Perhaps it's on the shelf next to the one about rewiring your house).
He was pretty nonchalant when I expressed my surprise. "It's easy. All you have to do is follow the instructions," he tutted, as though plumbing in a toilet was like plugging an espresso machine into the wall.
Really. If I attempted to plumb in a toilet, my bathroom would look like the final reel of Titanic (minus Kate Winslet, unfortunately); and when my wife had finished wading towards me through the watery depths, I doubt very much that my heart WOULD go on.
Anyway. I'm having enough trouble as it is erecting this cabinet that we bought from a certain Swedish furniture outlet. It was flat-packed in a gazillion pieces and, so far, has taken me seven hours to construct with the help of instructions that, with the best will in the world, can best be described as 'sparse'.
I think I've taken a wrong turn somewhere, because the cabinet on display in the shop looked like a New England-inspired 'shaker'-style item of furniture; whereas the one I'm building currently resembles a clothes horse.
Perhaps I need to use a JCB.

City Magazine
2004