I can't put up a curtain rail without the help of someone who can put up a curtain rail, I dare not lay carpet and, as a rule, I tend not to have a go at fixing things. Because the end result is inevitably much worse than the broken state of whatever it is that's already broken.
But last night - shamed into something of a corner - I had a go at fixing the kitchen sink.
A blockage had meant that neither the sink itself nor the dishwasher, which is connected to the same pipe, would drain. On Monday evening, I did what I have done many times before and poured a load of that expensive unblocker fluid stuff down the pan. And nothing happened. So I poured some more down. Still nothing happened.
I concluded that the only option was to phone Mark, our local friendly plumber, who knows about these things. That was until Vanessa gently suggested that I might want to disconnect and clean out the U-bend. She might as well have been talking Martian, or Scouse, for all the sense it made.
But, after a quick piece of Internet research and heart in mouth, I whipped my big spanner out. Sadly, it wasn't big enough (leave it). So I improvised by putting on some gloves and attempting to unscrew the big screwy clamp things by hand. And, to my huge surprise, I managed it with only quite a lot but not total flooding of the kitchen floor as a side effect. I then swiftly located a big lump of minging, hardened grease inside, pushed it out with a screwdriver and, bingo, victory was mine.
What a star.
Tomorrow and clearly on a roll, I'm planning to have a crack at changing a light bulb.
