The knowledge that a waiting world is suspended on tenterhooks – or ‘tender hooks’, as they are sometimes known – awaiting news of the bird feeder that started construction so many weeks ago has been a constant burden to this unemployed freelance writer.

Rest assured, work has continued in a desultory fashion over the intervening weeks – but let me confess that the spark of inspiration had died along the way, replaced by a sense of wearisome drudgery. This is because what started as a simple project with simple design parameters rapidly succumbed to what management consultants and project managers like to call ‘mission creep’. 

This bird feeder is a classic case: it was supposed to take a few hours and make use of only the bits and bobs lying around the place. From the outset, these were the rules, set out in black and white. But then things started to get out of control – symbolised by the decision to add finials to an already over-complex design.

Those bloody finials – what a lark it would be, I thought, to add a visual echo of Corner Cottage to the feeder. Make it a kind of scale model of the house, or a birdie version of our home. Hand-carving the first one was easy, powered by enthusiasm and thoughts of how jolly it would look when done. But it was actually a pain to make the thing and when it was just about done, the thought of making another was a big downer.

My go-to hands-on mate – and a proper engineer to boot – suggested sticking the dowel into the chuck of my drill and turning it as if on a mini lathe. I poo-poohed the idea: the dowel was too fat; the chuck was too small. Maybe I could stick the existing finial in the middle of the roof? I fiddled around with that idea for a while, but couldn’t get it to look right.

Then a thinner bit of dowel turned up, a remnant of the grand full-sized finial restoration so painstakingly recounted here. Into the drill it went, and it was a breeze to shape up a tiny finial using sandpaper and a modelling knife. There was a slight hitch: I wanted to the very tip of the finial to resemble a ball, like the finials on the pavilion at Lord’s – but this was harder to achieve than it first seemed, and impatience to be done with the whole damn thing meant it was a one-shot deal.

Making the second one resemble the first was a similar challenge, and dealt with in similar haste. Near enough was good enough – remember our get-out clause? It’s a rustic structure, so any infelicities of design, symmetry or finish are of course part of its charm. Within half an hour, the two were done. They were a little weedy for my liking – not really to scale with the rather more bulky lines of the overall structure – but they were finials and the thing was done.

While all this creative soul-searching was going on, one afternoon on impulse I returned to the roots of the project and knocked together a really basic feeder in half an hour, using rough planks, nails, and a screw hook I found lodged in a bit of two-by-four in the woodpile. It took one cut with a saw and a lot of hammering, and a rough-and-ready feeder was ready to be strung up from the big old pine tree in the garden. One thing was clear: the first feeder was a right porker by comparison and would need some other form of installation if the tree was to remain standing.

While the big, heavy, finial-bedecked version received a coat of primer and a couple more of weatherproof paint, the crude version was seeded with  . . . er, seed, and there it hung, unmolested by birds of any description. I added a couple of apple cores and one or two blueberries but these failed to catch the passing avian eye. There it hung until a particularly windy day last week brought it crashing to its destruction. So we have another issue: now that the big, heavy, over-engineered version is done, where will it go?

One problem at a time, I figure. I’ll find a spot for it and experiment with different foodstuffs; if the local feathery folk still stay away, we’ll have to look at moving it somewhere more amenable. Or changing the décor – who knows, birds may not be fans of Federation architecture – the interwebs are silent on the subject. I would be entirely in keeping with the troubled trajectory of this project if birds prove fearful of finials.