B&Q: The Dream Catcher

Hi all,

It's getting dark and cold out there now isn't it?

I mean, it's November, the temperature is dropping and we've put the clock back an hour so Scottish farmers can have a lie in. This has always confused me to be honest. The number of farmers is Scotland cannot be that great in comparison to people who work in call centre's in Hull. Why can't Scottish farmers try this:

Get up an hour later! Stop making life a sodding pain every bloody winter!

Anyway, back to the plot.

Because you are indoors a lot more than in the summer months your eyes are drawn to all those little niggly things that get you down about your house. All those bits you had promised your partner you would do about 6 months ago. You know the kind of thing, putting up shelves, changing the cupboard doors, putting the handles on things, washing up, that kind of thing, and in a moment of madness you think to yourself

"Yes, I have become DIY man. I will now achieve in 1 day what it has taken me 6 months to avoid"

A dangerous thought at the best of times.
Now I was sitting in my lounge, because if I sat in the garden I would be cold, and I remembered that my partner had asked for a TV in our bedroom (apparently Most Haunted is more entertaining than me in that respect, I disagree and ask her to put the heating on) so I thought about it for a moment or two and decided the time had come. Armed with nothing but a badly thought out, malformed plan in my mind I headed straight for B&Q.

B&Q is the emporium of badly thought out plans. If you go in there, any day or time of the week during winter, you will see the sight of 100 men, with dreams in their eyes. They walk around with bags of screws, bits of MDF and fibreboard and they all look purposeful. They have a purpose, a plan, and they know exactly how they are going to do it.

I, along with them, carried my timber and MDF and nails knowing exactly how my TV stand for the bedroom was going to go together. It would have made the chippendale brothers weep at the beauty of my construction. The flowing lines, the carefully guilded edging, the way the drawer would open with the slightest whisper, and the contents organised by size and usefulness. The Tv itself would rest on an inlaid circular piece of wood, with grooves cut into it, and bearings, so the TV could be rotated without any physical effort. That was my plan, and you could see it in my eyes along with every other man who had entered the store.

So I got myself back home, and described my plan to my partner with emotion and vigour and how it would be awesomeness personified in wood. She, however, was incredulous.

After 3 hours I had made something that would be accepted by Tate modern as a piece of art, and enough injuries to make a Chippendale weep. I threw it in the garden with the rest of the failed projects, the pizza box fountain, the paper mache newspaper rack and the dreaded kitchen knife dispensor.

My partner was horrified. How could I have done such a thing? So we headed to Ikea, and it was there I had my revelation.

Women, you see, have grandeous ideas. They are just as good as ours, but they do something we don't. They look it up in a fucking catalogue. Us men, we have grandeous ideas too, but in our minds, is not this office dwelling muscleless clueless idiot, but a God of Furniture. A veritable superhero of dovetailing.

What I noticed as we walked around Ikea, was the sad mens faces all lined with the same thought...

I could have made that.

Thanks for reading,