If you want DIY to be done well, get a woman to do it
This week, poet and artist Frieda Hughes puts her faith in the hands of her carpenters (and then wishes she had Done It Herself...)
LIBRARY BLUES
That the old dining room has become obsolete
Is not exciting news to my patient friend
Who dangles like a Christmas bauble on the end
Of our telephone call. I am designing the library
That has lived 20 years in my head – a library
With files and books and the Encyclopaedia Britannica
Taking up an entire shelf with the world’s contents circa 1996.
A time limit is donated by the painter’s single available day.
I have emptied the cabinets which have been carried away
By two borrowed men; I have tortured my feet
With the shifting of glasses, plates, bowls, amusing teapots
And enough candles to illuminate a cathedral at Easter.
I have marshalled my dyslexic brain to double-check
My measurements for the carpenters again and again
Until my drawings are perfect. The boards were cut to size
For speed and easy assembly, which is where it all went wrong.
Misreading my directions their complex deductions
Skilfully construct something into which my dreams will not fit.
In torrential rain I drive to replace shelving, and redraw to clarify,
For men who are unable to read a woman’s instructions.