aa

Added to all this was the shop’s stock and the worthless junk sold to my father by the previous owner — birthday cards from the 1930s, boxes of sealing wax and, for no reason ever made clear to me, many glass taxidermy cases.

It transpired that my father’s awareness of his own limitations as a handyman meant that he had not attempted to cut his panels around the built-in cupboard, but had rather boarded over it — a straightforward, if unsophisticated solution.

But this sedentary phase of his life came to an end with the arrival, in the 1970s, of the big D.I.Y. retail barns and their revolutionary democratization of home improvement, their seditious ethos that anyone could do simple jobs around the house and — most persuasive of all to my dad — their promise of great financial savings.

He was comfortable in his slacks and suede-elbowed cardigans; resigned, when necessary, to paying a few quid to his largely inept mates from the pub to botch any building jobs around the house.

But this sedentary phase of his life came to an end with the arrival, in the 1970s, of the big D.I.Y. retail barns and their revolutionary democratization of home improvement, their seditious ethos that anyone could do simple jobs around the house and — most persuasive of all to my dad — their promise of great financial savings.

But this sedentary phase of his life came to an end with the arrival, in the 1970s, of the big D.I.Y. retail barns and their revolutionary democratization of home improvement, their seditious ethos that anyone could do simple jobs around the house and — most persuasive of all to my dad — their promise of great financial savings.

In the corner of the kitchen, behind the stool where I ate my meals, was a built-in larder — that most despised of attributes in the wipe-clean plastic 1970s: an “original Victorian feature.”

When the time came to redecorate the kitchen, he, like many other men of the time, fell prey to the discrete charms of wood-effect wall paneling, finding himself implausibly excited by the possibilities offered by big sheets of hard plastic covered in images of sawed timber.