Is DIY a New Mental Health Issue?

When I was at school, DIY was a colloquial term for masterbation. It still is I think, when it consumes the rest of your life and the peace of others. One of our neighbours is like that.

He is a single man, early retired and always covered in grey dust. His only visitors are tradesmen and surveyors. He has spent three and a half years so far renovating his house and many years lay ahead. This is assured, because his 'to do' list gets longer, not shorter.

His motivations are debatable, but appear to be a deep seated desire to become Bob the Builder, or a regression to the Lego stage of human development. There is no plan, realistic time frame or coherent budgeting. It is a way of life, hobby and obsession rolled into one, and it has left him almost impoverished.

The first two years were for him ecstatic, as he knocked interior walls down with gay abandon. He has now just parted with twenty thousand pounds to hire professionals to repair the damage - the exterior walls having lurched inwards with lack of support. He is a toddler with a grenade in his hand.

But has he learned his lesson?

Of course not. He is now transferring the bathroom from the back of the house to the front, where there is no existing plumbing. The sewage pipe will apparently run almost horizontally under his floor boards, through two interior walls and out into the back yard where a trench will be required to connect it to the main drain.

This man exists to make noise, and if he falls out of bed one day you can be certain he will grab a hammer on the way down to complete a Ginger Baker drum solo. When he dies he will still manage to nail down the coffin himself.

Amen.