it's that time of year

Every year around Easter one of Mother Nature’s most enduring spectacles takes place.  It is as timeless and predictable as the Black Stork crossing the Bosphorus or the Snow Goose on its way North for the summer.

In the UK, scores of households eagerly await the emergence from hibernation of the Power Tool.  In sheds, garages and under-stairs cupboards, electric drills, jigsaws and sanders awake from months of dormancy.  The patient observer might even catch sight of the lesser-spotted Router (so named because it is not seen that often, belonging to the genus impulse-buy.  It is distantly related to the electric sandwich-maker, corn-on-the cob skewers and the fondue set).

The reason for the excitement is the annual springtime ritual of DIY.  Do-it-Yourself – or Bodge-it-Yourself as it is known in the trade – is the process whereby perfectly good houses are knocked about - walls taken out, walls put in, last year’s bathroom replaced by this year’s – in order to empty the shelves of DIY super-stores.

This need – and it is a need – is deep-seated within the human psyche.  It is no coincidence that many power tools look like weapons – indeed in the wrong hands they can become weapons of mass destruction.  We wear them slung round our waists in tool holsters.  The more reckless of the breed – the cowboy builder – has set him/herself free from the umbilical of the power lead and gone cordless.  

Anniemay and I are not immune from this need.  Having set about the garden yesterday in the Spring sunshine - moved plants, moved pots, moved them back again and finally moved them to the local dump - we take shelter today from the wind and rain and spend Easter Saturday indoors and assemble yet more self-assembly furniture.

Of course, climate change will undoubtably have an impact on the timing of this event.  In much the same way as buds and blossoms are appearing weeks, if not months, before their due date, so too are paint cards.  Anniemay was spotted in our garage searching out paintbrushes and Polyfilla, back in January.

I though, am a traditionalist, preferring to set my DIY clock by the appearance of the Easter bunny (The one who comes on Easter Sunday morning, not the one who appears in the shops the previous November).