Useless Workshy Duck of a Builder

Useless Workshy Duck of a Builder

Saturday 10th June, 10.30am - a date and time that will go down in history. For, after a dreadful, dreadful three days stuck up a ladder under the full glare of the sun, I finally finished painting the outside of my house. A job I started in 2003. Thanks to the curse of pebble-dash and the intervention of a certain Useless Workshy Cunt of a Builder it's been a bit of a haul. It wasn't the height I was worried about, it was the fact that anything I dropped took several seconds to reach the ground.

I am now a horrible shade of orange, and in the right kind of outfit could pass myself off as Judith Chalmers.

Alas, the same evening will hardly go down in history, as it happens. After letting the lovely Mrs Duck paint the landing and the office following the intervention of our friendly local plasterer ("UWCoaB? Yeah, this is the third job I've had to clear up after him"), I set about the task of reconnecting the lights and the electric sockets once I had witnessed England thrashing a pair of gays 1-0. Or something.

So, thanks to my usual DIY crapness, which I blame entirely on that UWCoaB, I managed to rewire the lights so that when you switch on the landing light, the spots in the bathroom came on instead. Nobody was impressed at this, despite vehemently insisting it was a "feature". A feature in which you could switch the kids' bedroom lights off from downstairs, which I deemed excellent, despite the warning that "you'll burn us all to death in our beds".

This, I said, would prove impossible, pointing out the water coming out of the smoke alarms.

Some people are never pleased. It's working alright now.

Next week, I am fitting a set of banisters. Or, to be entirely accurate, I shall be fitting a set of banisters, and Mrs Duck will be putting it right. As usual.