Robert McNeil: Our dads did it fine but DIY is doing my head in

We can’t. I speak of my generation. I guess succeeding generations of kids are now growing up with fathers who can’t do DIY either. Fathers are so different nowadays. They’re so caring and indulgent with their boys. They listen. They teach. They reassure.

The boy isn’t just shoved out onto the street to play fitba’. Growing up so loved, I think the New Boys will become good, better men.

But they won’t be good at DIY. Who is? Well, a certain breed of man. The tinkerers. Tradesmen: what planet are they from? How do they do that? God, sorry Tolkien, thought evil began with those who took things apart to see how they worked. In that sense, I am good.

But I‘m not good at DIY, and this harms my self-esteem. I follow the instructions – where there are any – and still nothing works. The only thing that works is gravity. It takes the screws from my hand and throws them to the floor.

I always drop the screw. Pardon my grammar, but I never don’t drop the screw. It’s an iron law, just as I always spill food down a clean shirt. And when a screw hits the deck, it disappears. It’s lost forever, hanging out with all the single socks and reading glasses.

If working on a job outside, I put on my overalls and wellies to show I mean business. It means I’ll soon be sitting with my face in my hands – because I am handless. I just don’t have the mentality for DIY. I’ve tried looking it up, seeing if there are books on Amazon about it. But there ain’t.

And it’s serious. On a recent job, enraged at my failure, I felt a throbbing vein on the side of my head. I was going full Basil Fawlty, shouting at an electric guitar I was trying to fix: “You’re killing me! I’m going to have a stroke!”

I even Googled it: “How do you keep your temper when doing DIY?” There’s nothing to help. There are books on the virtues of working with your hands, but none on how to achieve the Zen-like insouciance needed for success.

Some idiot spoke earlier about coming generations of boys. But I’ve seen young women on YouTube, inspiring lasses who’ve opted for independent lives in the country, and they wield electric drills effortlessly.

Women tend to be more serene. Perhaps that helps. Perhaps their mothers taught them. Our fathers taught us nothing. Perhaps it’s a blessing that we are not our fathers. And our fathers probably weren’t their fathers either.

Table-hoggers

NEVER having been a habitué of coffee shops, we take no interest in their customs. The establishments generally attract idlers, gossips, malcontents. They are not places for the important man of affairs.

However, it has come to our attention that some people do their work in them, buying some kind of a beverage with a code name like “Americano” or “Flat white”, then sitting for ages at a table, working hard on their eBay bids and important Twitter announcements.

I have known writer friends to do this, and have sometimes thought I myself might get on better in such an environment, free from the easy distractions of home, and feeling obliged to work, rather as one does more exercise at the gym than in the hoose.

However, luckily, there’s no such establishment near where I live now and, even if there were, I know I’d just get annoyed at someone slurping or wearing peculiar millinery or sitting in sweaty Lycra or gesticulating histrionically. The list is endless.

Doubtless, there’d also be a starer, one of these peculiar dumbos who just stare at a chap in a markedly bovine manner. You know me as an avuncular and cheerful fellow, but I am really rather grumpy, and apt to poke such folk in the eye, leading to a court case and lurid tabloid headlines: “Grump poked gawper in peeper.”

At any rate, now Debrett’s, the bible of behavioural order-seekers, has warned against “table-hogging” in such establishments. And it has counselled against looking askance at “near neighbours because their conversation or crying baby is playing havoc with your concentration”.

They are effectively banning me. Indeed, some coffee houses already ban the laptop brigade at certain times. One such shop owner said: “Since implementing the policy the whole vibe is much more vibrant, with customers interacting.” The whole what now? And what is this “interacting”? Is it like dancing?

If I wished to vibe vibrantly, and I do not, I would attend a discotheque. As for interacting, I have my Lord of the Rings figurines. I also have my work to do, though I see it is nearly time for The Antiques Roadshow.

Stench of

old lady

Comedian Vic Reeves wants to create his own brand of perfume – called Old Lady’s Handbag. Vic confessed: “I really do like ladies’ perfumes.” The perversion began when he was a boy who, understandably, sniffed the bottom of his auntie’s handbag: aroma of Parma Violets and marshmallows, “old ladies’ sweets”. Hmm. Does sound rather nice.

Backward step

Office workers believe managers using jargon show they’ve no idea what they’re doing. A study mentioned “blue-sky thinking”, “low hanging fruit” and “touching base”, but at least these were creative and metaphorical in origin. It’s “moving forward” that rips my knitting. Where else are we supposed to move? Backwards? Sideways? Such a lot of nonsense.

Isle be damned

How sad to see Gruinard ablaze from “one end to the other” after a wildfire. We feel for that benighted island, used for testing germ warfare when England was at war with Germany. The blaze was described as “apocalyptic”, a word increasingly on our minds. Let Gruinard rise from the ashes and be free from travails moving forward.

Tenuous much?

Explorer and slavery despiser David Livingstone has been associated with … slavery. How so? He once worked as a cotton-spinner in a mill whose owner had business interests with West India merchants. It’s like being called racist because you bought fags from a shop whose owner had an auntie who once visited her sister in apartheid South Africa.

Pack it in

Could jetpacks be here at last? Trials are taking place in yonder Lake District, aimed at helping paramedics soar up slopes to rescue injured hill-walkers. Yes, but when will the rest of us get them? It would solve all our traffic problems, though we’d probably keep banging into each other as we stoated aboot the sky.

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