Oops! Damage

 

The whole of my adult life seems to have revolved around damage limitation. When you’re married to a man who doesn't know one end of a hammer from the other then damage limitation is always lurking in the back of your mind.  

These days, I refuse to let the husband near any of his rusty old tools. He can’t be trusted, that’s the top and bottom of it - although he doesn’t take much persuading to steer clear of them, to be honest. There are two big boxes under our stairs. One contains assorted bent and rusting screwdrivers. The cross thread ones are worn smooth and blunt at the end, rendering them useless.  The other box seems to a be a receptacle for more bent and rusting tools, many of them totally unidentifiable, at least to the husband.

I’ve written before about the damage done by the husband’s early attempts at DIY. Coming from a family of pretty practical men (and women), who could change plugs, put up a shelf or wallpaper a room it took a while for me to decide whether the husband was playing the avoidance card or was actually totally and utterly incompetent. In fact, when I say it took me a while it probably didn’t take me that long. It soon became clear that it was the latter - I had just lived in desperate hope. We were young marrieds, three children under three, very little money. The only way we’d get anything done was to do it ourselves. 

I made allowances for the blowtorch incident where the husband was let loose with a borrowed tool and a lot of old paint to remove.  There wasn’t too much damage done, just a little scorching between floors, a few puddles and a frightened four year old, muttering ‘daddy needed water.’  

The attic incident was rather more traumatic, involving, as it did, a shocked passerby, a husband stranded on the flat roof below the attic window and his wife with a severely strained back from leaning out of said window and pulling the husband back in. The main casualty was the paintwork which never did get patched up.

By the time it got to the curtain rail incident I knew I had to admit defeat. Having successfully attached five curtain rails without assistance, I decided help was needed with number six, which was above a particularly awkward square bay. The husband was reluctantly employed with hammer, screwdriver, and very bendy curtain rail. I stood by with the screws, knuckles white against the windowsill, nerves in tatters. Carefully, the husband climbed onto the table, pulled the unwieldy rail as high as possible...... and promptly achieved the treble: straight through the window, still clutching the rusty screwdriver, as the table buckled on its flimsy legs and the curtain rail pinged back into my face. 

It was at this point that my future life flashed before my eyes. If we were to remain married - and this was looking highly unlikely right now, as we hurled swear words back and forth through the smashed glass and the children huddled together in a corner of the room, unsure whether to laugh or cry - IF we were to remain married then all future DIY was going to be down to me - and I was no expert. The husband would remain at least 10 metres away at all times, preferably doing something useful, like looking up the number for the local plumber/decorator/builder. 

Of course, as time passed, I sometimes forgot the extent of the incompetence and casually put in a request for a touch of paint on a scuffed skirting board or a drop of paste on some flapping wallpaper. Each request only happened once. The whole skirting board had to be repainted after the ‘This’ll Do’ tin from the garage deposited a thick skin (in the wrong colour) across the small section that needed doing.  And the attic wallpaper that I was told triumphantly ‘was sorted,’ was found, on inspection, to have been sealed down each join with unevenly spaced two inch masonry nails. 

As for the incident of the seriously  spurting radiator, the lost end key, the washer that had dropped down between two floorboards and the pair of us (one of us naked - don’t ask) desperately holding soggy towels to the leak whilst simultaneously trying to phone a plumber - the least said about that the better. 

One day I’ll write a book.  

But for now, just a haiku. I think it says enough. 

The Husband

Grabs a screwdriver

Moves towards positioned screw 

Damage is looming 

Thanks for reading - Jill