THERE is a new altar to worship at: all hail the mighty god of DIY. If you're not sitting down to a Zoom call on Monday morning with plaster-streaked hair, singed eyebrows and muscles aching from hard graft, what on earth have you been doing with your weekend?

Was it really only a few short weeks ago that everyone was going daft for loo roll and hand sanitiser? Now, there's a mad stampede in the aisles for decking paint and planks of wood.

The Ps are all the rage: pergolas, patios, paint, pallets, planks, panelling. Google searches for "build a pergola" are reportedly up 950 per cent, with "get a pallet" rising by 550% and tips for knocking together a homemade fire pit seeing a 300% spike.

Despite grumblings in an earlier column, I have been unable to resist the siren-like call of DIY either. The shoogly decking has been taken apart and repurposed to build raised beds. I've dismantled an old vegetable rack and turned it into two hanging baskets. Upcycling, I think, is the trendy term.

Everyone's at it and the results are typically mixed. There's the good: as art expert and academic Kate Cowcher can attest after she took a knife to the bathroom linoleum in her Cupar home last week and uncovered some beautiful Edwardian tiles.

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The bad: Specsavers has urged DIY enthusiasts to take extra care after optometrists had to deal with a slew of nasty eye injuries, from foreign objects to chemical burns, in the past couple of months.

And the ugly: those tackling overambitious projects and making a hash of it. Remember, it could be some weeks yet before you can get a properly trained tradesperson in to patch things up.

The trick is to choose something that, if it goes badly awry, you can pass off as being deliberately rustic. Preferably outdoors where, when things don't go quite to plan, you can simply throw a tarpaulin over the wreckage. That doesn't work if you accidentally pull down the kitchen ceiling.

Not everyone is getting their sleeves rolled up, certainly if rocketing sales of hot tubs is anything to go by. That said, perhaps the need to soothe knotted muscles goes hand-in-hand with DIY?

Each to their own, although I've never grasped the appeal of stewing in a soup of chlorinated water and other unmentionables. Even if it does involve chugging down Prosecco (as seems to be the general idea of these bubbling cauldrons whenever I ask proponents what the point is).

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Hot tub is just fancy lingo for a big bath where everyone takes a turn to sit in the same water. Like the old tin tub your granny used to have. I'll take a pass, thanks.

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