De aye why

OK, it's official. Not the fact that our politicians appear to be spending all our hard-earned money to dredge their moats and install high-tech security shutters at their (third-residence) mansions...God knows they'll probably need both soon enough, to fend off angry hoards armed with bricks and rolled-up copies of "The Telegraph"... No, the fact that little Mrs. Non-Politico - me - is so broke that I'm going to be forced to do MY refurbishing MESELF. Yes. I am packing my two children off to Grandmother's country cottage this upcoming half-term (not a second residence, not my "current" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) residence, and no moat nor acres to spread taxpaying manure costing five thousand pounds a lorry on). Because if I don't do something to fill the holes in the wall.. and remove the ragged wallpaper... and paint said surfaces (and new plastered fireplace)... and replace the tiles fallen off the bathroom wall...(etc)... I will not be able to have a 40th birthday party at home (soon). As I will be too ashamed. Period! Sad but true. And with no way to drown 40 years in copious drink to dull the shock and no-one to help me commiserate, I will then probably feel my age. Which is what, above all, you're meant to try and avoid when you turn forty - aren't you? (Whether or not I'll feel fifty after attempting to revamp my own home single-handedly, is another matter.)

As for my new-found (very reluctant) role as de'-uh-ray-uh, (de' as in dec), suffice to say I know NOTHING about D.eye.why. Except that, like everything else in our household, I have to DO. It. Myself. (With. NO. Help!)

So, I was supposed to tootle off to our local four storey hardware store this afternoon, B&Q. A tad more than a hardware store, a glorified version, for those in the know. To pick up some 'supplies' for my home renovation exercise. Oh, and a 'brush' to block the letterbox at our tenant's place where some daft opportunist attempted to burgle them at four in the morning the other night by sticking a metal broom handle into said letterbox and jamming the lock to try and open the door. Streetlight bang outside the front door, and car in drive. Everyone asleep upstairs. Which isn't a story any landlord wants to hear (but that's all another story for another time).

But anyway. I went nowhere. I ended up making my son a Viking Longship instead and eating a large slice of wholemeal bread with organic peanut butter and pine forest honey - when I wasn't in the slightest bit hungry - instead. Hmmmmm. Procrastination is the thief of......

And that, folks, is that. I should've been in politics instead, I muse, perhaps via the Parent Teacher Assoc. at school (like moose lady across the Pond). And I would have had a moat and acres of something (woodland? grassland?? savanna??? mud????) and three residences (Oh, well of course I forgot, I do have three mortgages but that's why we are so poor. No one pays them for me or even buys me a John Lewis designer stone sink. Bad time to enter property speculation, that was). Naturally (continuing the fantasy) I'd need my city residences and country piles all prickling with taxpayer-funded security to avoid blind broom-handled-burglars.

Oh well. I'd better log off and start looking up how to strip off three layers of wallpaper dating back 80 years, and fight the cravings for chocolate biscuits (which seem to accompany the intention). I'm thinking, I don't own overalls. Wonder if my floral apron would do?