NST Muddy March Marathon

Some plodding domestic stuff, lots of fresh air and exercise.

Your lists of basic skills have got me thinking and remembering. This is mainly as a result of years of extreme poverty (necessity being ....) but I have done quite a lot and been doing it for a long time.

As a child I remember endless sandpapering of old, ugly (but well made) furniture and then painting it. I used to mix cement etc for my dad - he probably thought it was a boy's job but I was the one who would measure accurately and mix properly. Started helping my mother with painting and decorating from the age of 11 (ie doing 50% or more of the work).

I am a self-taught cook. My mother was a bad cook and has only really learned since we all left home (and it's all jars and packets). She tried to tell us that toast was supposed to be black and sausages pink and black stripes or half and half. I brought a book from the library and taught myself to grill sausages and do baked potatoes when I was eight.

My mother can bake - worked in a bakery from leaving school until my brother was born (when I was 2). When it was my baby brother's Christening, dad went off to the pub, leaving her to do the catering so I was drafted in to help. I was so tiny she stood me on a chair so that I could reach the table. She made wedding cakes to make extra money and I mixed the fruit. On Sundays, to make her meagre budget go further, we made plate custard, jam tart, fairy cakes, jelly and singing lily for during the week. We did the catering for many events including my 21st and my wedding (55 in the wedding party, 300 in the evening). I can also cut wedding cake properly. I don't like fruit cake so haven't done a lot of celebration cakes since helping out at school events (would make several small Christmas cakes). I can ice with royal icing (spreading and smoothing not the roll out stuff they use now) and make beautiful icing roses (did paper ones first as gifts for grandparents and others).

I'm a whizz with flat pack furniture, again starting as a teenager helping mum put her prized larder unit together, then doing my own and the for the boys (built some shelves when I was working in a bookshop, I was more confident than the boy I was working with). I extended the life of my first 'bought' kitchen by painting and stencilling all the doors and making short curtains to cover the gaps where there were no doors anymore. My current kitchen (and that at my dad's old house) was put together one unit at a time, after finishing work and the 'new' fitted kitchen at the house I have sold cost £500 for an assortment of ebay finds and labour for Mr and Mrs Builder (3 of us put it in over a weekend - lasttime I was able to climb on a worktop).

I've taken out old fireplaces (1930s ones not Victorian), knocked down pantries and a bedroom wall (15' x 9'), not great at plastering but have done patches up to a couple of square metres, rebuilt the back garden wall (not beautiful but still standing after 20 years), built raised beds with cobble walls, made a garden 'panel' from recycled wall (4" x 4" posts then diagonal slats to fill the space - had some help on joining the longer pieces).

Made a bed smaller by replacing the old iron frame with a wooden board I cut to size, mattress made to fit (from someone's old caravan cushions, encased in denim and cotton drill), made sonic the hedgehog stencil and painted Sonic onto the headboard, peg rail made from old skirting boards.

Mum always did my kitchen tiling but she probably put me off tiling - a plumber friend gave her a few mosiac tiles left over from a job. I helped her tile the back board and base of a fire surround with tiny tiny tiles. When he came again, he told her she should have put the tile cement on, laid the whole 12" tile on to the cement, pressed it in and when dry soaked off the backing paper (not laid each tiny tile individually).

Sewing - made clothes for my Sindy doll and my brother's teddy, from scraps when I was about eight. Mum made most of my clothes (odd cast offs from my cousins, my precious one and only pair of jeans from her male cousin) until I was 15. She wasn't very good at trousers - made a couple of pairs for herself which weren't right but as the fashion was for longish tunic tops the mistakes were hidden. She was supposed to be making me some cord trousers. She bought jumbo cord and I looked like a brown bear - shaggy and huge (I was thin as a lath at the time). So no more clothes from mum.

Started to sew my own when I was 17 (made a squre neck button through blouse with lace inserts for my cousin's wedding - mum said I could not have picked a more difficult pattern if I'd tried) and never really looked back. Made all my own clothes, would go and draw something in a shop, then come back and make my own pattern. Bought three bolts of cloth when I first bought this house (early 1980s) and some more fabric when I was expecting DS1 (1984) and those curtains were in regular use up to within the last ten years.

When my husband was made redundant (when DS2 was 4 months old) I made 4 curtains + 4 linings for each window (as good as double glazing). We were short on sheets so I used some heavy white cotton drill - but it was only 36" wide. Cut strips off the bottoms of the curtains (moved from downstairs to lower ceiling upstairs), attached them to each side to make bits for tucking in.

Going to stop now. Feeling better about myself. I have made mistakes and don't do things perfectly but a bit of thinking and applying logic and taking things one step at a time (and pray if you ever have to cut through an electric cable, even though you know you turned off the electric supply) you can fix (if only temporarily) almost anything.

Nowadays I am limited by the weight of things and have to pick days I am prepared to go up step-ladders.

Today I am grateful for a lovely walk, for lots of friendly dogs (and a young man who admired my panda hat) and for lots of beautiful birds.