The level is still wrong
because the land slopes,
and I used my tired eyes,
not the bubble’s advice
to set out a dozen slabs
around the cut back tree:
here another shoddy job
of hard lifting and laying
an imperfect surface,
a memorial, my monument.
Tag: DIY
A Wall
Each imperial brick length
required malodorous acid
to be dippled, slow-brushed
(avoiding the old lime mortar),
applied to each unpainted face,
covering the exposed wall:
“Up, tight as possible,” she said.
“Right to the [recently plastered
and whitewashed] ceiling.”
My red canvas was four yards wide
(an old measure, antique, in keeping
with the building’s Edwardian lines).
I laboured, bent more, for a day,
etching with those rarely-exercised
dug out tools:
A paint scraper, a black hammer,
a quite unsure stepladder,
and two inherited wire brushes;
that last pair kept
over forty years to remind me
I am not the practical son.
Decoration, no OBE
You want to remove
our angled dado rail,
the one they fitted
(‘far too parallel’)
up the first flight
of carpeted treads,
I had agreed,
but now reverse
what I said:
It is to be replaced,
by an uglier design,
a Stannah stair lift,
to rail my climb.