Dear LPG, 

I want to talk about DIY today. This is an activity that can leave the person who dabbles with a very positive feeling if you get it right or regretting the day that you got started if it does not quite go the way you envisaged. But there is also another alternative outcome…

I have always tried my best to take my own advice on the subject which is to make sure that you know as much as possible about the expected result of your plan and start out with as much knowledge as you can before tackling any DIY task.

Ladies, do you remember those days before all electricians had to be qualified, the men around you just knew about DIY if they wanted to be thought credible?  Did you even find yourself asking a husband, brother or male friend to help with a project only to be fobbed off with ‘yes, I will do it later’, after which later never seemed to arrive?

Our beloved males are often far too busy to remember the requests of the women around them,  I remember when I used to get involved with the odd DIY project back in the days when YouTube was not yet supplying video lessons on how to do almost anything, but there was the advantage that family members did not move as far away from each other as they grew up, and there would usually be one or another knowledgeable member of the family that you could call upon for guidance and damage limitation in the event that you found yourself out of your depth.  

On one occasion, having moved into my first flat, it only took a week or two before I got fed up with looking up to the ceiling and seeing the one depressing light bulb suspended from a twisty wire which was distributing its bare looking ambiance into my living room.   I asked my father and my brothers for help with swapping it for something a little more homely.  I decided that a different bulb was not going to make that much difference and a lampshade was not going to do it for me either.  I was after one of those bursts of light which involved five or six bulbs with the appearance of an upside-down sprig of flowers growing out of the ceiling. 

Do you remember the time when we all ordered what we wanted by turning the pages of a shopping catalogue?  Nothing has really changed apart from the fact that we have swapped sending off a cheque for pressing the online payment button, and my new light fittings arrived in the post a few days later.  

I did a lot of asking and my brothers did a lot of promising, but my new light fitting was still in the box a month later and I was still looking up at that sparse light-producing flytrap above me from time to time.  Aware that the one-year guarantee was more likely to run out than I was to get the thing on the ceiling, I took a look at the instructions and thought to myself, how hard can it be?

The first thing I learned was the importance of not electrocuting myself, and I learnt all about main fuse boxes and those little switches that turn off the power in certain parts of the house.  There were 2 switches for lights (downstairs and upstairs) and two that disconnected the corresponding wall sockets and the one that dictated what happened in the kitchen.  That was not rocket science, so I disconnected the downstairs light fuse, tested for power and got started, after all I did basic science at school too.   I did get the fitting up there although the bit attached to the ceiling could have looked a little more secure.  I carried on asking, but now I just wanted the assurance of a manly check of the thing before I reconnected the fuse, and the answers came thick and fast;   ‘later’, ‘you did that all by yourself? I’ll check it soon for you, ‘’ Yeah, of course but I just have to get this done first’.

I pride myself on being reasonably patient and something else I am not, is completely stupid.  The fuse stayed out and the light stayed off, but I have to say that I was happier looking at my inverted light-giving flower with no illumination than the bare light bulb that preceded it.  So, the fuse stayed disconnected, and I used a standard lamp for lighting in that room for about another month,  

It was then that my family started to complain to me.  Quite a few of them told me that they had visited and got no answer more than once and I could not understand because these visits were happening while I was at home when the times were checked.  This continued to happen for a couple of weeks before my then quite worried father caught me in one day having given notice by phone.

While he was there he actually took a look at my handy work and sounded genuinely impressed and the work finally got inspected.  The fuse was replaced, and the light was ambient as predicted but it was then that I realised something else.  My doorbell was powered by the downstairs light fuse and had been disconnected for as long as the lights…

There is always something…

JW, Catford