Old jokes aside about living nearby, I am not a handyman. So when my wife started expanding on plans for a home made verandah, some three metres off the ground and fronting the house, I was a tad trepidatious.
You see, my wife grew up with a builder in the house - her father. Want a new garage? No problem. Re-plumb the laundry? Sure, ready by lunchtime. Build an unscalable benchmark against which to measure future spouses? Managed that one overnight.
So, understandably, she despairs at my abject lack of DIY skills. I have no manual coordination with hammers; secateurs just confuse me; and I have no idea of the difference, if any, between a cross-cut saw and a rip-cut saw. (I'm not even sure if that is funny; I just googled for saw names.)
I had my mind blown recently by the fact that more than half the world's population build their own home. (I hasten to add, I plucked that figure from the ether to illustrate a large number of folk - the true number having slipped my mind - but believe me, the number was quite substantial.). They trust the alpha male of the household to construct an actual household. One that, presumably, can withstand vagaries of nature, time and children.
I would be lucky to dig a straight hole for the first ... post, thingy. It would be like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge: I'd get to one side of the house only to find the house collapsing back where I started. This would be my Sisyphean boulder; my eternal penance for some ancient transgression - perhaps marrying into such a testosterone led family.
We will very likely rely on hired labour in the end - for the verandah. But the whole episode will leave yet another scratch in the facade of my wife's ideal husband. That long, cold sobering-up called marriage.
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