Hamish McShanks

Ham Shanks Secret Diary w/e 16^th March 2008

I’ve been doing a spot of D.I.Y this week, ‘that’s not like you Ham’ I hear you mumble, and you’re right. I certainly know my limits. When it comes to any task which requires patience, diligence and manual dexterity; I have none of these attributes and as such I tend to save up my pennies and get ‘a man in’. Unfortunately I’ve had a couple of bad experiences in the past. For example the man who replaced my broken chimney after some storm damage managed to put the wrong type on for a chimney with a gas fire. Were it not for the carbon monoxide alarm in my living room I would now be pushing up the daisies.

Two valuable lessons came out of that experience; a) if you have gas appliances in your house then please make sure you have working carbon monoxide alarms. Carbon monoxide is completely odourless and undetectable and will kill you stone dead. You’ll drift off into a nice never ending sleep from which even the bravest Prince Charming won’t be able to resuscitate you. And b) don’t get dodgy Irish geezers with less teeth that brain cells to do any domestic repairs on your house.

Apologies to any Irish readers, I don’t want to stereotype a nation but this man was one of your countrymen. I blame myself really, when the tweed cap appears to be more coherent than the owner underneath then you really should be asking yourself if he’s the right man for the job. Either ask the cap to fix your chimney or fish out the yellow pages and get someone in possession of a cerebrum to do the work. In hindsight the insistence on payment in cash and the speed at which he disappeared over the horizon after the ‘work’ had been done should have rung some alarm bells.

However you live and learn. As a result I thought I might attempt to do some domestic improvements myself. Nothing too ambitious, I thought I would start by lifting the carpet in the living room and refurbishing the wooden floor underneath. After all I am fortunate enough to live in a house old enough to actually have floorboards and I think they add character to a room. The fact that the cream carpet which had been in the house since I moved in now looked like a skinned Dalmatian with mange and you could grow tatties on it probably encouraged me to get cracking.

Now as an aside here, hands up how many of you think off-white is a sensible colour for a carpet in the main living area? The only route between the front door and the back door. The first thing you step on when you enter from the great outdoors. Hmmm? Anyone? Anyone at all? …. No exactly!

I didn’t really think about it when I was viewing the house as the bulk of the floor was covered with a nice rug. But by the end of the first week I was cursing the previous owners like there was no tomorrow. I was inventing swearwords as I scrubbed forlornly at yet another embedded stain. They must have covered the thing with a sheet of polythene between viewings; the b@stards! But that’s all water under the bridge now and as long as I keep more than 500 metres from them at all times I don’t have to go back to see the nice Doctor with the white huggy jacket for me.

So the first task was obviously to lift the hated carpet. As the vile object was going into the bin anyway I needn’t worry about getting it up in one piece. It also meant I didn’t have to remove the furniture from the room. I could just cut around the fixtures then move it all about to pick up the remaining pieces of carpet. Like one of these puzzles where you shuffle shapes about till you get the ‘space’ in the right place!

I was quite looking forward to this job, armed as I was, with a sharp Stanley knife and a stout pair of textile scissors. However I’ve never forgotten what my primary school teacher Mrs Donnelly told me all those years ago; a) don’t run with scissors and b) always get a grown up to help you. As a result I was perfectly stationary and had recruited the help of my elder brother for this task. A seasoned veteran of home refurbishment; just the man for the job.

Apparently the first thing we had to do was have a planning meeting? My brother brought the room to order with a rap of his tape measure on the mantelpiece ‘Right Ham if you can take the minutes’, ‘the what?’, ‘the minutes’, looking at my watch I whispered ‘you cant take minutes Neilly’, ‘they are an abstraction, a temporal measurement at best, you cant actually takoooowww!’, ‘just write down what I’m saying!’ he barked, whilst rubbing some life back into the palm of his hand.

‘Why?’ I replied sullenly, gingerly feeling my reddening cheek ‘so we have a record of these events’, ‘why?’, ‘so that we are not in any doubt as to what was decided and what happened’, ‘Well that’s easy; nothing seems to be happening just nowwwwww!’ I was in a real quandary. Clearly I was still holding the scissors and therefore beholding to the promise I made back in 1974. On the other hand I felt a growing compunction to kick my brother in the happy sack. But a promise is a promise so I remained still.

Talking to a space just above my left ear he continued ‘Neil Dicks sends his apologies for not being able to attend this afternoons carpet lifting’, ‘I thought you said he was p*shed last night?’, ‘just write it down’ he hissed, pointing a finger at the notepad ‘right right’ I mumbled whilst scribbling furiously, ‘Dicksy cannay make it cos he’s hung-over; got it’, ‘No no NO! write down exactly what I say’, ‘including that?’, ‘what?’, ‘the bit you just said about writing down exactly whaoooowww!’

Half an hour later and things were not going well. We’d barely read through the agenda and I was reeling under the blows. The scissors still clutched tightly in my hand, my arm raised aloft as if holding an Olympic torch ‘musnt drop scissooooww!’

I couldn’t help but sense some latent aggression from my brother. Normally he’s quite laid back but something had clearly got under his skin, it wasn’t just my inability to document a meeting ‘I’ve changed my mind about the floorooomppff!’, ‘s’ok, really Neilly, I like the carpegnnfmmpff!’ dropping on to my knees. He loomed over my prone body ‘Oh aye and the last person that can’t make it’ SLAP! ‘is Leo’ SLAP! ‘fecking’ SLAP! ‘Sayer’ SLAAAAAP!!

So outing your brother in a previous diary as a closet Leo Sayer fan would appear to be a dangerous strategy. Don’t fight it Neilly, the first step in your rehabilitation is to admit that you’ve got a problem. Well clearly that’s the second step. The first would appear to be ‘beat seven colours of keech out of your younger brother’ But I think we both know who the real loser is there ……. Ah …. It’s me isn’t it?

Doei