It’s been a weekend of bits and bobs and dabbling about at Corner Cottage. No grand designs, no magnificent triumphs, but the satisfaction of getting some niggling tasks out of the way. Let’s call them odd jobs.

First up – the bathroom door. Although now freshly painted and boasting a new glass shower screen instead of the previous clammy plastic curtain, the bathroom continued to bother us. This is because the door not only dragged on the floor tiles with an ugly scraping sound that made late-night micturition trips a matter of public knowledge rather than stealth, but it also failed to lock. Our tenants had cleverly bodged the mechanism with gaffer tape – they were, after all, engineers.

So, it was straight into removing and dismantling the lock, without the foggiest about how it worked. On the plus side, dismantling stuff with no idea about how they work is a skill I have developed since childhood; on the minus side, this long experience has not inculcated the necessary caution when tackling things containing springs. After retrieving the small, hard-to-find widgets that shot out of the casing with surprising velocity when it was unscrewed, some judicious bending with pliers, a spot of grease, and careful reassembly, all was tickety-boo.

Thence to the matter of the scraping. Before all the experts leap in with their advice, let me state that a) I have taken down and re-hung doors before, and it is a pain in the designated orifice, and b) I therefore wanted to avoid taking down the door to plane the bottom at all costs. It’s a two-person job at least; it usually elicits such friendly dialogue as:

“Up a bit! Up! UP!”

“I’m lifting it up!”

“OK, down a bit . . . down! Too much!”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Thus to the internet for hints and tips. Most suggested the usual things like tightening the hinges, but one likely site that recommended placing a sheet of sandpaper on the floor and swinging the door back and forth such that it removes the bit(s) that catch on the floor. It called this method a ‘life hack.’

The flaw in this plan was instantly revealed on attempting the hack. So tight was the bit of the door that scraped the floor that the sandpaper just jammed it as effectively as any doorstopper. But removing the door remained off the agenda. So I amended the technique by kneeling on the floor and sawing the sheet of medium-grit back and forth vigorously under the door, trying to keep it as flat as possible so it removed extraneous material from the right spot.

It was an unqualified success! After a mere three or four hours of this engrossing endeavour, the door no longer scraped. Admittedly, my lumbar region was a rigid mass of stabbing agony, but the door had not been removed from its hinges! Take that, door-fixing experts of the universe!

Next, back to the paintbrushes. During all the histrionics about painting the bathroom, I neglected to mention another piece of decorating that was much simpler and more fun. On a whim, we decided we needed a blackboard in the Corner Cottage kitchen. We could then list the things we need from the shops, tasks to be completed, messages of affection and inspiration and the like.

Bunnings provided a small pot of noxious-smelling matt-black paint, we identified the wall in question, and within a few hours of stretching at tippy-toe on a plastic garden chair with brush extended, we had our blackboard.

And there it remained for a few weeks, dusky and forbidding, with chalk all ready, showing nary a notation or a doodle. It was as if no-one wanted to be the first to besmirch its perfection. But today, we decided to remove a hulking ‘30s wardrobe from the master bedroom. Despite Daniela’s and my best efforts, we couldn’t manoeuvre it out of the house. Luckily, with social distancing restrictions a little looser of late, we were able to summon two nieces to help.

This they did smartly and efficiently, with none of the door-hanging style of dialogue outlined above. Indeed, it was clear that when we lack brawn, brainpower and teamwork can more than compensate. And for brainpower and teamwork, fellow chaps, the girls have us beat.

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Once the wardrobe had been shifted, we prepared a little dinner and my younger niece approached the blackboard with a confident air and christened it. I really like her work — it’s optimistic.

Add to all this activity a bit of woodchopping, planting a few mother’s-day Daphne shrubs in the garden, and some general lugging of boxes, and we’d earned a little Pinot Noir in front of the fire. Many hands (and minds) definitely do make light work – and you don’t need a dastardly minion with a steel-rimmed bowler hat to get the dirty work done.