Rising young media star

The following email landed in my mail box:

Dear Mr Simms,

My name is Helen and I am a reporter for the Kent Messenger. I have come across your website dedicated to Snodland. I must admit I laughed and I would love to do a piece on yourself and the website.

Would you be able to contact me? You can reach me on this email all day and pass on your telephone number or give me a call on 01622 xxxxxx. I would very much like to hear from you!

Helen.

Could this be the start of my writing career?

My DIY Skills :- Door #3

OK, I may have been a tad over-confident with this one.

Number 1 sprog's bedroom doorframe was well out of whack. Still, flush with success from the master bedroom door, I set to.

After about an hour I was nearly there, thanks to the power plane I bought before door number 1. It has this wimpy little bag on the side that's meant to catch the shavings. Yeah, right. I bet the designer is still chuckling over that one. However, the aperture is almost the same as the vacuum cleaner hose. So, plane handle in one hand, vacuum cleaner hose in the other, mask over my face, I was in boy toy heaven. Clever me.

Here's a handy little tip to the guys reading this. Vacuum cleaners can only handle so many wood shavings. And when it gets full, the engine gets hot. Fortunately, it has a safety cutout. Of course, I only realised this after ten minutes of rocking with my head in my hands, moaning "I've broken her vacuum cleaner. That means I have to Go Shopping" over and over again.

Freshly emptied, I made the final shavings. It must have been a combination of the vacuum cleaner engine and the plane blade whizzing through the wood that caused the smoke alarm above me to scream. Startled I reached up to open the alarm and remove the battery with one hand, whilst holding the plane in the other and the vacumm hose in the... wait one.

The whole alarm came loose out of the ceiling just as the hose slid out of the plane. It was at that moment I realised I was holding the vacuum hose, not the plane. Now, about 20 years ago a friend lent me his electric plane. That's how I lost the tip of my finger. Hey, what do you know. Darwin was right. Instead of trying to catch it I let it bounce half way down the stairs. I've bent the bottom metal plate into something like the right shape, and as soon as I can sneak home some super glue (banned after the Itchy Nose Incident) it'll nearly be good as new.

The most frustrating thing, though, was carving the hole in the door for the door handle apparatus thingy. A little too much enthusiasm with the electric drill with the side magazine (Oh, come on. We all imagine it's a sub-machine gun) means there's a slight crack by the door handle, and do you know how difficult it is to carve a three inch deep hole exactly the right dimensions to hold the locking mechanism?

I'm sure I heard Her mutter something about a carpenter afterwards. It was something like "You're getting to be a proper carpenter". There was definitely the word 'getting' in there somewhere, I'm sure.

My DIY Skills:- Door #2

We went to the DIY store to get the door furniture for door number 2: the master bedroom (I have no idea why She laughs every time I call it the master bedroom. Oh well.). Whilst there The Missus saw a flat-pack ottoman she wanted. At half past ten, with all my electrical and carpentry tools arrayed, I set to work. At the same time Er Indoors started assembling the
six pieces of pre-cut and pre-drilled wood that would make up our ottoman.

This time I carefully laid the old door over the new and scored the edge, marking the exact shape I had to plane to. I manhandled the door into the Workman vice, planed a little bit, manhandled it into the door way, assessed the progress, and repeated the process. Ha! Proof! The doorway *was* out of true. Finally at noon I had a door that perfectly matched to the
doorway.

She came up to check my progress. "Wow! That fits really well," She exclaimed. I decided to ignore her surreptitious glance towards the bathroom door. "And I've finished the ottoman".

"Gosh! And You only took an hour and half to put 10 screws in" I said, but only in my head.

Next the hinges. I carefully marked the position, chiselled out the recesses for them and went to screw the door to the frame. The hinges were on the wrong side! How could this have happened? I was so careful. "Damn!" I cried. But wait! I was holding the door upside down. Doh. Flip the door over and the hinges aligned perfectly.

"What's up?" asked She Who Must Be Obeyed.

"Nothing, I thought I had made a mistake, but it's OK"

"Well, when you've finished the door, can you look at the ottoman. The lid has fallen off"

Ha! Result! So now she acknowledges that a man's work is not so easy. Not only have I masterfully fitted a door, one of the most difficult and taxing tasks in the world, but I have shown Her that my innate skill in assembling flatpack furniture like a Swede is a manly attribute that She cannot hope to equal. She concedes that the heavy, manly work around the house is my domain, and is even now drawing up a list of projects that will be exclusively mine.

So finally I've won an argument with Her.

My DIY skills :- Door #1

I spent all afternoon hanging a new door on the bathroom. I'm not a carpenter, and the last time I used an electric planer I was left with scars on the end of my (now shorter) middle finger that are still there 20 years later. I have a bad back and high blood pressure, but without a word of complaint I react to Er Indoors' hints. True, She has hinted since Christmas, but planning is vital in these matters.

So I try to explain that if the door fits on three sides, then the fourth side must by definition be OK too. The oddly shaped gap between the doorjamb and the top of the door must be because the door frame wasn't square.There can be no other explanation.

And yes, it was necessary to use an electric screwdriver, two ordinary screwdrivers, a hammer, an electric plane, a manual plane, a yard stick, a nelectric drill with a variety of bits and a Workmate. The pint of Youngs Double Choclate Stout also was a vital part of the work.

I tidied them up afterwards.I think it totally unfair of Her to expect me to vacuum up the six inch deep layer of wood shavings, and Her use of the term 'another botch job' is quitefrankly hurtful.Some people are just never satisfied.