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 

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Holidays and Other Disasters

Holidays. The word evokes in me a mixture of excitement and trepidation, in equal measure.  I have had so many disasters and near disasters that it’s a wonder I ever set foot outside the house, much less venture to foreign climes.  Add to the mix the unreliability of buses, taxis, trains and planes, not to mention other people, and it becomes clear that I really should be in my house knitting, making bread and sending out for supplies.

It all began with my honeymoon in Paris, where the new husband got food poisoning and I had to attempt to translate 'my husband has diarrhoea and is throwing up,' into passable French. Judging by the puzzled looks on the assistants' faces (yes, plural, several were called over to help/snigger) I failed miserably (managing only a rather self conscious, ‘mon mari’ to a suitable standard) and resorted to the one thing I hadn't wanted to do - a laughable charade of something being expelled from my bottom (fast), swiftly followed by holding my nose and wafting my other hand under it, before executing the well known mime for vomiting.  They gave me some huge, lozenge shaped 'horse' pills along with instructions I couldn't understand, and I scuttled back to our tiny, stinking box room in a back street pension.

At this point, I have to say, the smell wasn't just emanating from the new husband (or we might have been divorced now) but from a small cupboard in the corner of the room. Hidden in there, for reasons now incomprehensible to me, was a large, very ripe Camembert, wrapped loosely in a piece of brown paper.  To this day, we don't know whether the husband should have taken the medication by mouth or by 'other means' but, either way, he recovered and seems to have shown no ill effects over the past forty one years.

Then there was the year we set off for Turkey and ended up in a Travel Inn in Gatwick with daughter and hyper four year old grandson, asking where the pool was. There was a (fairly) simple explanation for this. At Manchester Airport we discovered we had missed the plane. By twenty four hours. As neither the husband nor I was sure whose fault this was we simply stared at each other for a few seconds before asking when the next flight was scheduled. We weren't expecting to be told it was four days hence. After a short, hissed discussion on our options we gritted our teeth, bought four more outbound tickets from Gatwick, scheduled for less than twelve hours later, and settled down to study the train timetable. It was at this point we realised the slow night train with numerous changes would pull in to Gatwick approximately four hours after we should have boarded the plane.

A taxi was eventually secured at great expense, and we set off for Gatwick, booking the Travel inn en route.  The following morning, after a particularly stressful conversation with the Turkish manager of our intended hotel (in which we hoped he'd understood we still wanted the rooms, and weren't cancelling the whole holiday) in yet another taxi, bound for yet another airport, we were slowed and finally stopped by a multi vehicle accident on the motorway.  As I alternately bit my nails and stared worriedly at my watch, the grandson sang 'The Wheels on the Bus' on a continuous loop and scanned the horizon for a swimming pool.  We eventually landed at our hotel, twenty four hours late, hot, sticky and tired, to be greeted by a bemused manager, trying to get his head around these strange English arrangements.

Lanzarote was the biggie. In fact, Lanzarote was so memorable for its catalogue of disasters that I subsequently documented the whole episode and distributed it to all participants. It was a treat for sixteen members of the family out of my dad's recently cashed retirement fund, and involved travelling to Lanzarote for a short Christmas break. What hadn't been on the agenda was a lost passport (involving a last minute 400 mile round dash); the realization that the sight of our Dominican son-in-law with a non-British passport would throw airport staff into a frenzy of searching and interrogation; a sudden attack of a mystery illness, a frantic rush though winding roads, accompanied by flashing blue lights, and an insurance scam resulting in the husband removing the drip from number two son's arm and making a break from the hospital whilst being chased by an irate band of doctors and nurses; a taxi dash (the taxi having been commandeered from the unfortunate couple who had booked it and were making their leisurely way towards it when the husband and son shot out of the hospital exit and jumped aboard, like something out of a James Bond film); and the consequent subterfuge and element of farce caused by three male members of the family possessing the same surname. The grand finale came as we left. Two serious looking hospital representatives were spotted at the reception desk, asking for a Mr Carrington (of which there were three).  We crept past and threw ourselves on the waiting bus, yelling at the stunned driver to, “GO GO GO!’ 

And finally, there were the holidays that never were….

Cuba, the expensive treat to ourselves in the year of our sixtieth birthdays.  The husband injured his back, skiing, two weeks before we were due to go.  We were planning to get insurance the day after the skiing holiday….. A lot of money to lose and a hard lesson learnt (although we did finally make it six months later); the cycling holiday with my two brothers and their wives (a present for one brother and wife), when, a few weeks before trip, the husband got something caught in the spokes of his wheel, went over the handlebars and broke his elbow so dramatically that it required two operations and a full year of rehabilitation.  We’ve rebooked for next year, when the husband will be confined to the house for a good month before we go; the weekend in Paris that was booked for the wrong dates, swearing done, losses cut and rebooked.  For the same wrong dates again.  We went to Windermere.

If I ever invite any you to accompany me on so much as a weekend away, I think you know the correct response?

                                    Turkey, when we finally got there…..

Not having time this week to write my own poem, I was searching around for something appropriate, when I came across the verses below.   The poem amused it as it reminded me of my childhood holidays, when my dad would take me, my mum and two brothers to stay with our cousins in Margate.  We kids were beyond ourselves with excitement and anticipation, and felt so sorry for my dad, having to drive us all that way and then drive back and go to work. Little did we realise that this was dad's holiday: a day at work, followed by a peaceful evening in front of the fire with pipe, slippers and total peace.

Holiday by Robert William Service

I love the cheery bustle
Of children round the house,
The tidy maids a-hustle,
The chatter of my spouse;
The laughter and the singing,
The joy on every face:
With frequent laughter ringing,
O, Home's a happy place!

Aye, Home's a bit of heaven;
I love it every day;
My line-up of eleven
Combine to make it gay;
Yet when in June they're leaving
For Sandport by the sea,
By rights I should be grieving,
But gosh! I just feel free.

I'm left with parting kisses,
The guardian of the house;
The romp, it's true, one misses,
I'm quiet as a mouse.
In carpet slippers stealing
From room to room alone
I get the strangest feeling
The place is all my own.

It seems to nestle near me,
It whispers in my ear;
My books and pictures cheer me,
Hearth never was so dear.
In peace profound I lap me,
I take no stock of time,
And from the dreams that hap me,
I make (like this) a rhyme.

Oh, I'm ashamed of saying
(And think it's mean of me),
That when the kids are staying
At Sandspot on the sea,
And I evoke them clearly
Disporting in the spray,
I love them still more dearly
Because . . . they're far away.

Thanks for reading    Jill

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