B&Q. DOA. IKEA. OMG. DIY. RIP. LOL. HAPPY BANK HOLS EVERYONE

Well now.  The Bank Holiday is upon us and soon we shall be turning up in our hordes to sit moaning in the car park at IKEA and looking forward to spending our Bank Holiday Monday trying desperately to assemble a flat-pack Billy ‘What-Not’ from pieces of  vaguely wood-veneered chipboard that have been drilled by a distracted toddler with instructions put together by a committee of monkeys at a drunken SKYPE meeting.

Well not I. If the weather is fair, I shall be sitting looking at my fairly tidy garden, chilled prosecco in hand, dreaming of Aiden Turner… or Colin Firth… or someone equally hunky yet unattainable. I shall have friends with me and if it is wet and mizzy, we shall sit inside and eat smoked salmon and marinated lamb until it comes out of our ears. We certainly won’t be traipsing out of town to a shopping area dominated by a neon encrusted bowling alley, a tex-mex fast food restaurant, an over priced furniture shop and a DIY outlet that has the words ‘ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE” above the door.

What is it about gardening stores,  furniture shops and DIY Super Stores that brings out the worst in people? People bump into you and smile wanly as though they’ve just smelled something horrible (probably have), couples who were desperate to live together, now fight over which colour they should paint the bathroom (brown is not a good idea however 70s retro you are ), teenagers stamp about texting obscenities to their friends because it’s ‘so unfair’ that they’ve been dragged there (I agree with them) . Every time I have been to that Swedish MDF emporium, the queues have been the length of Peter Andre’s therapy bill  – full of miserable husbands, hot and tired children and angry wives, all of them waiting for chance to beat the other poor suckers to the last pack of meatballs.

No wonder B&Q have been suffering, no-one really wants to argue their way round a DIY store on a festive occasion anymore do they? Shouting across the outdoor heating display like the cast of Shameless – it’s so retro humiliating. Much better to have a stand up row in your own home about something important like…ooh I don’t know… who hid the remote, do we catch up on Breaking Bad or start House of Cards 3?

The great thing about the internettyweb is you can browse endlessly, swot over the tiniest specification details and spot a bargain without the slightest chance of a trolley in the back of  your ankle, a screaming 4-year old throwing chocolate milk around or a stressed Dad punching the compost bags when he thinks no-one’s looking.

So. What’s it to be? Traffic jams? Broken plant pots? Other people’s children? Or. Be like me. Do your garden equipment shopping in the company of a particularly good 1999 Rioja and the latest edition of Masterchef.

The calm. The quiet. The gentle laughter as you spend the hours you would have been driving, exchanging amusing anecdotes with friends and loved ones. Bliss.

So. Listen. Have a lovely BH whatever you do, but don’t forget. DIY is like a marriage. However hard you work at it, it only takes a couple of loose screws to ruin the whole thing.

See ya. Holly