The Mother believes that when it comes to me and DIY the acronym means ‘destroy it yourself.’ While she has a wealth of evidence to support this belief, she occasionally chooses to ignore her deeper convictions.

Last week she announced she wanted the entire exterior of the house painted. “Who will you get to do it,” says I.

“Who will ‘I’ get to do it?” she repeated, “you’ll do it. ‘I’ will buy the paint but ‘you’ will do the work.”

I went to the pub that night where I made desperate attempts to recruit volunteers to give me a hand with the job, but to no avail. They were all busy, even the retired among them.

The Mother decided that Friday was the mornin’ to start work, so I got up and dressed thinkin’ we’d be goin’ to Clonmel to buy paint and equipment. I was hopin’ ’twould be rainin’ by the time we got home and the job would be postponed indefinitely.

“Where are you goin’ dressed like that?” she asked.

“I presume we have to go to Clonmel first to buy paint and brushes and that sort of stuff.”

“You presumed wrong. First we have to wash the walls and Pa Cantillon is arrivin’ any minute now to drop off a power hose and cherry picker. In the afternoon our cousin Manus is bringin’ all we need in the line of paint, brushes and rollers. So eat your boiled egg and put on your duds. It’s straight to work for you, my bucko.”

Pa Cantillon, the feckin shleeveen, was in cahoots with the Mother all along and never said a word. No sooner had I the top off the egg eaten, than his jeep drove in around the back bringin’ the power hose, a water drum and towin’ a cheery picker.

“Where will I put these Maurice?” Cantillon asked with a big grin on his puss.

“Do you really want me to tell you?” I said, “You’re some friend not to warn me about this.”

“I had a confidential agreement with your Mother and I am not one to break confidences. Now, let me show you how to work these things.”

The cherry picker turned out to be great sport. When it lifted me up in the air ’twas like bein in a hot-air balloon, I could see all over Killdicken. I was then given a crash course on the use of the power hose. Pa filled the water drum, plugged in the motor, shoved a pipe from the motor into the barrel, pointed the spray gun at the wall and handed it to me. ’Twas a great yoke and I loved workin’ it. The power of the thing shifted all kinds of dirt. When I finished on the ground level ’twas up on the cherry-picker I went, cleanin’ all before me. I even managed to settle a few scores while I was up there.

My first victim was a stray tomcat that has been breakin’ our hearts of late between raidin’ the bins and terrorisin’ the birds at the Mother’s feedin’ station. When I came on him he was the picture of leisure as he stretched himself on the high wall beside the house, the last thing he expected to encounter at that height was me. I gave him the full belt of the water jet up in the rear end and he took off screechin’ like a banshee. We haven’t seen him since.

From my vantage point I spotted Tom Cantwell, one of my friends who was ‘too busy’ to help with the paintin’, but obviously had plenty of time to be out on his hi-tech bike decked out in his Lycra. He crouched low as he tried to fly past the gate unnoticed, but I hit him on the bare legs with a spray from my gun. When he recovered from the speed wobble he just kept goin.’

I was admirin’ the work of the power hose when I had a brainwave, if I was to use it to spray-paint the house the job would be done in half an hour. I stuck the suction pipe into a ten-litre tub of paint, pointed the gun at the gable wall and pulled the trigger. The paint hit the wall at the rate of a litre per second and such was its force that the whole ten litres came straight back and covered me from head to toe.

When the Mother came out and saw what I had done, she nearly lost her reason. She got on the phone to her boyfriend Stefan and his son Jan and ordered them to come and take over the operation immediately.

After I cleaned myself I came back out and tried to break the ice. “At least I got rid of the tomcat,” says I.

“There’s only one tomcat around here needs gettin’ rid of,” she snapped.