So, that was summer. Like some fleeting bandcamp romance, it’s gone & the next one is another year away.
Of course, summer isn’t really over; summer, for student-types who lounge around most of the year anyway on their government-supported asses, isn’t over until the end of September. However, the travelling, the sight-seeing & vain hopes of exotic landscapes/adventures/encounters are most likely all behind us now. We wait with baited breath now for the frigid thrills that winter brings. & in some ways, that’s nicer. We can certainly drink more – it’s colder, alcohol warms the spiritual & material cockles, thus it’s not only wise but actively encouraged – & that certainly counts something towards chill encounters.
Thus, we begin to retreat indoors. Where the howling rain & the moaning wind cannot pry their immaterial fingers. & we sleep, & we consume caffeine & we do DIY. Yes, we do.
I have already started my share. It’s also possibly the first proper DIY I’ve ever done – & as such it was commandeered most admirably by Dad. Dad took it upon himself – what with his more worldly-wiseman ways – to help out with the measuring, the sawing, the chopping, the nailing, the hammering, the drilling, the inspecting, the gluing, the scrutinizing, the welding, the laserwork, & the painting. Mostly. So it’s basically my design – my vision – as realised by some third party. I’ve whored out my genius that others may bathe in the enlightening glow of basic woodwork.
It wasn’t a hard task, not for my first ever piece, merely 6 pieces of cheap, pseudo-wood arranged just so that they form the image of a magazine rack. I thought I’d buy some racks – but I’d need to spend loads, so why not just hack relentlessly at some pseudo-wood in the garage & make your own, commerical-free rack?
Only now, I want to build more. I have the infernal itch that must afflict men nationwide. Maybe a bookcase, maybe a stool, maybe a desk, maybe an adventure playground for the cat. Or maybe something no one’s ever built before when they’ve undertaken the DIY, the holy grail of all things homely. I have ransacked IKEA & pilfered through Homebase’s drawers. Mais, non. It’s costly & flat-packing is so much easier.
There is a primitive joy, I think, in building flat-packed furniture. It’s the Duplo to DIY’S Lego Technics. The dull thunk of the weird möebius-looped bolts, & the tidy corners & precisely spaced shelves. It’s all very neat, very neat indeed. But you know what else was neat? The Third Reich, yeah. & it isn’t dirty like DIY – it lacks that makeshift, punk aesthetic. & it certainly isn’t creative. Worst of all, it seems to come with a lucky-dip bag of screws & awkward tools. So not only are your home tools not suitable for the job, there’s always one piece too many of the 2inch twisty-job & one piece too few of the 3.5inch hammery-job.
Imagine the uniformity if every monument to every great leader, every terrible war had arrived at its location flat-packed.
“Right, Set: 1805; Nelson’s Column’s arrived, but we’re missing screw 6400D, we’re gonna have to skip steps 5 thru 10, & we’ll just have him stood on an old fruit crate or something.”
“Aw, no, they’ve sent over the nose from the Statue of Liberty set.”
“Barbados managed to get their Nelson’s Column up, no problems.”
“We’re sending this back.”
& before you know it, we’ve got a 150ft high commemoration of Hitler’s dog, because everything else was out of stock.
So, fuck the fascist identikits of IKEA, let’s go do some DIY.
j.
white francis 