D-I-WHYYYYYYYY

On this lovely Easter bank holiday weekend, while many of us are gorging, spare a thought for the poor fools who thought it would be a good idea to use the long weekend to get round to those ‘little’ jobs round the house.

While you lie there prone with your chocolatey distended stomach aloft, they too are probably lying down – either trapped under the shelving that’s just collapsed and rendered them unconscious or curled up in the fetal position as the true magnitude of what they’ve taken on hits them.

I’ve seen grown men cry over laminate flooring. Not my better half, I hasten to add – he’s a dab hand with click-lock, but I have seen him truly broken, head in hands, when our 100-year-old postage-stamp-sized flat has revealed yet another of it’s ‘quirks’ at the end of a long and dusty day. Who needs straight walls and floors when you can have ‘original features’? He’s utterly convinced that all its previous builders and workmen were cross-eyed. I put it down to DIY demons.

These little imps have a wicked sense of humour. They enjoy setting booby-traps on the ‘easy’ jobs, like putting the water pipes in the wall just behind your drill so the simple hanging of a mirror morphs into an emergency plumbing situation. They particularly like encouraging pets to get involved - sharing the latest in paw-print paint interior styling, weaving around the ankles of the DIYer on the stepladder in an opening-scene-of-casualty style, or helping with flat-pack furniture assembly by batting the most essential screw across the floor and through a crack in the floorboards – never to be seen again.

If you, or any of your loved ones, have fallen prey to bank holiday DIY, you have my deepest sympathies. Try to keep your sense of humour when the demons show off theirs.

I’d offer to help, but I have a pressing appointment with an Easter egg.

Murphy the cat and the DIY demons 'help' with the new bath panelling...