My DIY beef with a man called Mark

It is not a frequent occurrence that I pick up a screwdriver.

DIY to me actually means DDIY – don’t do it yourself (unless ABSOLUTELY necessary).

And it was absolute necessity that drove me to my bedroom, facing my Velux blinds, armed with a screwdriver, a YouTube tutorial, and a vague dream that one can become good at DIY merely by wishing it be so.

“Are you sure you want to take off both blinds? Isn’t it better to do one and make sure it works?” asked my housemate from the bed (they know me well enough not to leave me unsupervised at critical moments such as these).

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I replied breezily, enjoying the ease with which I unscrewed screws from the soft wood with the aforementioned screwdriver. So simple! So fun!

After a good ten minutes spent removing the old blinds from the windows, we broke for lunch.

As I scooped forkfuls of frittata into my mouth, I daydreamed about how nice it would be to have new blinds at last after the old ones had broken, and how lovely to have everything ‘just so’ in my bedroom.

Without chaperone, I returned northwards, only to be faced with these smooth grey clips, hammered into the window frame, that just wouldn’t come off.

Never failing to aid me in logic, my brain came to the conclusion that the point of blind replacement to remove everything from the old blind to make way for the new.

I checked the YouTube video again. Mark (now and forever more my mortal enemy) told me in no uncertain terms: “These clips are a bit awkward to take off, but if you use a flat-headed screwdriver, you can prise them free. Just takes a bit of elbow grease.”

Consider my elbows greased, Mark. I tried for about a minute then gave up.

I yelled down the stairs for my other housemate.

“Can you help?”

“Coming!”

Together, we heaved, grunted and groaned, making scratching grooves in the soft wood as we jammed the screwdriver under the clip.

Woozy from all the unexpected exertion, I took a breather.

“Let me just double check this,” I said, re-opening YouTube and checking Mark’s video, while my housemate continued to saw at the pesky clips.

But we were right – it was unmistakable. Clips off. Although – 12 comments. Oh no. I scanned through them at speed, heart dropping.

Don’t take the clips off unless you’re not going to replace the blind. I did this and had to order new clips.

Thanks for the video, Mark. I think you should re-record this, telling people only to take the clips off if they’re not going to get a new blind.

DON’T TAKE OFF THE CLIPS!!!!!! [panic emoji]

“Hang on–” I started, just as one of the clips finally broke free, pinging across the room before clattering to the floor.

“Oh.”

We stared at each other.

“Fuck.”

*tears*

Once I’d stopped crying (one minor inconvenience is more than enough these days) we seated ourselves heavily on the bed, the consequences of blindly following Mark’s advice settling in.

No blind. Raw, unimpeded sunlight. Admittedly not much going on in winter. Replacement parts? Velux customer service closed until Monday. Etsy? Amazon? Amazon. Great. God bless Amazon. FIFTY POUNDS FOR TWO PIECES OF PLASTIC?? WITH A FIVE POUND DELIVERY CHARGE?

*tears*

Substitute located. Arriving tomorrow. Peace reigns.

Once the shock and the crying had subsided, my multitudinous feelings turned to Mark, sharpened to a vicious point.

“What the fuck, Mark?”

“Yeah, Mark, what the fuck?”

“Let’s find out where he lives.”

“Egg his house.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah!”

“Send him a bill of £14.99 for the new clips.”

“Bastard.”

Our vengeance well-planned, I began to install the other blind. What else could possibly go wrong? Now I had committed the cardinal sin of listening to Mark, it didn’t seem like the situation could get worse.

And true enough, after a small freakout when the blind I’d ordered didn’t initially appear to fit, and then another freakout when the screw wouldn’t go in, progress emerged.

Under the gentle and calming tutelage of Charlie DIYte (now there is a man I would marry / follow to the ends of the earth), one of the two blinds was installed. The other window will be making aggressive eye contact and throwing unwelcome sunlight at me until I blind her too.

The moral of this story: never DIY today what could be DIdone tomorrow. If it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. And never, never trust a man called Mark.