“I feel a blog post coming on,” said my son, grinning as he watched me snapping away at the bees. The words have become something of a joke, as practically everything may now engender a blog post. We were having a break. There were dozens of bees on the loosestrife beside the pond, all different kinds, busily harvesting the nectar of summer. It had been a busy morning for us too. After all the normal jobs and his breakfast had been done, I’d put his shopping away and cleaned the barbecue ready for the Thursday ‘lad’s night’. At least I wouldn’t be cooking for them for once.

“Possibly,” I replied, pausing to point the camera skywards at a low-flying kite. What I would be doing was cleaning the pond and fountain pumps and sorting the UV filter… housed in the most inaccessible position for vertically challenged people. Still, we were working together, his height and strength, my dexterity, and talking as we worked so the day passed pleasantly, even though I was obliged to go back to the dreaded supermarket for a few things he had forgotten…and call at the homeware place to get him a houseplant for the table we had just built.

I’m getting good at this flat-pack malarkey. I remember the very first flat-pack furniture I had tried to build, way back in the 70s. The board from which it was made was soft and bowed with the slightest pressure. Holes were pre-drilled, but hit and miss. Dowels had not come into use and no-one had electric screwdrivers.

As a very young wife, we had just moved in to a house with a huge living room. I had considered the long wall… a wall I could, potentially, fill with books. The new, flat-packed furniture seemed a good option. It wasn’t exactly cheap back then…but it was sleek and modern and it matched. Up until that point, our home had been furnished with a misassorted collection of whatever we could manage. I could build them, surely. The adverts showed beautifully coiffed women putting them together with ease and a simple screwdriver. How difficult could it be?

Youth is so optimistic…

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