IT'S Saturday. I'm writing this more in hope than expectation. You see, I'm waiting for 'the man'.
On Tuesday last my three television screens unaccountably went blank - probably overweight pigeons perching on my satellite dish. The house is loudly silent.
Though not a television junkie, I'm a news addict and with the impending election it's no time to be out of the loop.
Naturally I'd rung the appropriate helpline, to be told the earliest engineer available was four days hence on Saturday.
I'm a lost soul, hoking about in cupboards for obsolescent radios before remembering they're all inaccessible in the roofspace.
Funny how history repeats itself. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my mother postponing all manner of treats or trips.
"I can't go," she would lament. "I'm waiting for 'the man'."
My father was many wonderful things but 'practical' wasn't one of them, so, for any domestic crisis, be it structural, electrical, plumbing or decorating-related, we had to get a man in.
Over the years, a succession of such artisans passed through our house, none of them ever on the day or hour they promised, but arriving at dinnertime or as darkness fell.
'The man' was generally accompanied by 'the lad' - a monosyllabic adolescent sullenly resilient to learning his trade, who merely looked on or fetched and carried, but with a voracious appetite.
My mother was wise. She believed the only way to keep 'the man' on the premises was to feed him.
It was a disaster to let him out on any pretext until the job was done. The family meal was frequently held back until 'the man' (and 'the lad') were fed.
I recall in particular Jimmy the painter and decorator who saw the world through a haze of Gallaher's Blues and whose glasses were so fogged with paint-specks that he hung my teenage bedroom wallpaper (a dainty pattern of pendant laburnum blossom) upside down.
He was three lengths in before we discovered his mistake. He also removed the dustsheets and used the top of the piano as a pasting table.
By contrast, the man I married was handy as a pocket. Anything he couldn't do himself was sub-contracted to a network of contacts who could.
Happy afternoons were spent at the kitchen table discussing everything but the problem over endless cups of tea.
Then came a protracted foray to the hardware store for the necessary materials - and the job was postponed to the morrow.
No man is perfect. The Loving Spouse went out for the papers one Saturday and came back with a 30 foot wooden-hulled sailing boat, which he parked on props in the garden.
"What shall we call it?" he asked. "How about 'The Eyesore'?" I suggested. It didn't go down well.
Domestic repairs were entirely suspended while he and his friend spent whole weekends stripping the craft to its bones, storing its innards in the garage, the roofspace, the back garden and the side of the house.
The place resembled a breaker's yard. Work on the boat consisted of walking round it writing things down in a notebook.
Winter set in, enthusiasm inevitably waned and the boat hunkered miserably under its tarpaulin, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood.
It became a landmark. "Oh, you're that house with the boat in the garden..."
Why our neighbours didn't run us out of the community is a mystery. It's universally acknowledged (by women at least) that unless supervised, reminded or nagged, men never finish anything.
Eventually, the boat (and its bits) was sold back to the son of the original owner for a nominal sum and the Loving Spouse grudgingly acknowledged middle-age. Like Tom the cabin boy in Captain Pugwash, I smiled and said nothing.
Meanwhile, Saturday is ticking by. My allotted engineer slot is 8am to 5pm. I've been up since six, showered, dressed and with my face on.
I've cancelled lunch and am hollow with hunger. It's 4.40pm and no sign of 'the man'. Can I bear missing Strictly?
Excuse me... the doorbell's ringing. Dear Lord, please let it be 'the man'.
