Tonight the hot tap in our kitchen sink got stuck in full, drumming flow - the handle clicking uselessly as I turned it frantically. I managed to find the mains and turn off the water supply, phew, and then I phoned my parents, for their brief consolation, which was £80 cheaper than a plumber.
My Dad is an author, and we are the kind of family who can't put up shelves, do grouting or fix taps. (Occasionally, when we were kids, we wished our mum was a hairdresser, and our dad a builder: careers with practical application and bonus results. Loft extensions and 80's perms aplenty).
And so, I was touched when my Dad turned up promptly with his M&S shopping bag, clicking with assorted spanners and washers. He managed to take the tap apart and - thread some thread around the thread, making it work again, at least until we can summon up the 'chore energy' required to hurl ourselves through the automatic doors of B&Q towards the tap section.
This should temporarily distract me from my wall dilemma. As I say, we have never been a knocking-down-wall kind of family. We wouldn't dare. Mind you, the wall between our small, (can I say tiny?) kitchen and adjacent dining room had a cheek ever going up in the first place. It was probably built in the days when wives were referred to as, 'Her indoors'. None of your egalitarian Ikea family space back then.
To fight back I'll need building control, a steel beam and a suitcase of dosh, but most of all, I need to change decades of DNA to become a knocking-down-wall kind of family.
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