Do It Yourself

DIY. I'm sorry but I don't like it. I hate the feeling that you could, at any moment, drill through something vital to the fabric and integrity of your house. I despise the challenge of balancing sky-high expectations with rock-bottom abilities. If I could, I would never DIY anything ever again for the rest of my life.

And yet, apparantly, as a man I ought to love DIY: crave it, yearn for it to prove my masculinity and manhood in the most indesputable of ways. Maybe I need to face the fact that I am a big girl and would rather be listening to a nice record or reading a book. Or even tending the garden; at least I can't destroy anything of importance out there.

So, yes, I have put a curtain rail up. Squiffily perhaps, but it is nevertheless up. And the curtain hang on it as intended. However, a dark cloud of forboding is beginning to gather on the horizon...

Incredibly, there are now a mere matter of hours until Beth and I have to run in the Bristol 10k race. I've never done anything like this - I've barely run anywhere since my school days - and I'm beginning to feel somewhat nervous. I keep telling myself that it is for charity and has nothing to do with my physical prowess or target settings, and yet I can't quite silence a small but insistent voice in my mind telling me that I will look a fool and probably collapse with London marathon style wobbly legs a matter of yards from the start line to the general disgust and derision of a throng of fit, lean and toned specimens of manlihood. What it is to be a man; what it is to live with the voices; what it is to feel like your not quite 'up to scratch'. Never mind. I'm going to experiment with putting the timing device you have to attach to your shoes on an unsuspecting and infinitely lither person and claiming their glory.

Or, as I should have done with the DIY debacles of today, pay someone else to run the bloody race for me.