mostly david ephgrave

While I’m hoping my dad will come over to look at my broken boiler today, the downside to this is I feel the need to swing into action an ‘Operation Cleanup’. It’s not that I live in squalor. It’s just that, being a man of limited means – and limited DIY ability – I find myself surrounded by a string of things I haven’t fixed, or little household jobs I haven’t got around to doing just yet. While this leads to low level frustration from day to day, when nothing quite works how I want it, when someone else comes to visit, I start to see my flat from their perspective; worse still when this person is my dad, who takes the underlying definition of dad (i.e. Handyman Machine) to the extreme. He makes a mockery of my skill-set of basic juggling and pronouncing- Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch-capability. At the time of writing this (7:39am) the military manoeuvre has begun. It started with fixing my loose toilet seat, which I did before breakfast. Th...

Everything in my flat is falling apart at once; if not at once, in tiny increments. The first thing to falter was my kitchen door handle. A few months ago, it began its gradual decline in service. I now daren’t touch it, for fear it will come off in my hand (sexy) . It no longer has a purpose, save the potential for a slapstick moment. If I were a proper man, I’d fix it, but I’m not. Who needs access to white goods anyway? (...idea for a panel show.) The kitchen is fast becoming a no-go area. I’m not just referring to how you gain entrance. The oven light is broken. So is the one in the extractor fan. Every so often, a cupboard door comes off its hinges. It’s less a kitchen, more a Crazy Fun House. I opened my wardrobe the other day, minutes before leaving for a gig, for the top shelf to collapse, bringing the clothes rail down with it. I caught it all as it fell, having cat-like reflexes. It’s surprising how heavy all your clothes are when held collectively. My wif...

As I stood in Dunelm Mill in Stevenage yesterday, listening to Toploader blaring from the Tannoy, I felt like I’d reached a personal low point. I was shopping for curtains and paint. The prospect of buying either item didn't fill me with joy. My hunt for dull DIY products had already taken in B&Q, The Range and Wren Living – and, unlike the bird in that final shop name, I was rapidly losing the will to live. There are only so many superstores you can visit in a day before you reach your personal limit. For me, the tipping point was three . Dunelm Mill was a step too far. Dancing in the Moonlight was the icing on the cake. Thank God my trip to Dunelm Mill was just a one-off. Imagine working there. I’d be barely five minutes into my first shift before I went on a psychopathic rampage.