I’m working hard. Staying indoors, out of trouble. Although I did go for a drive up to the tip on Sunday, and saw a car that had so much birdshit on it that it made me burst out laughing. I reached for my phone to take a picture, then realised I was compromising the safety of the citizens of Wandsworth, so I put it down, and followed the car for some way, hoping I’d pull up alongside it at traffic lights to allow me to immortalize it on the internet. I failed. I’m sorry. But man alive, it was smeared from bumper to bumper in about 5 kilos of heavy duty birdshit. The process must have taken a flock of several hundred birds about 18 hours of sustained bombardment to create it. And the bloke didn’t even make an attempt to clean it off. Maybe he’s just trying to pretend it’s not there. I don’t blame him.

*
The song “If I had a hammer” lists a number of things that the chanteur would do, if only he could get his hands on a bloody hammer: he’d hammer during the morning and evening – presumably leaving the afternoon free of hammering, which is only fair, really, to give the neighbours a bit of peace and quiet – before hammering out danger and warning, and finishing up with hammering out love. Which sounds a bit weird; I for one have never used a hammer during the act of love, not after that time I tried to, and was quizzically asked “darling, what are you doing with that hammer,” to which I could only respond “I’m not sure, dear, perhaps I’d better put the hammer away.”

Later in the tune, it becomes clear that, rather unimaginatively, exactly the same things will be attempted with a bell – an object perhaps more suited to the act of love, but only just – and finally a song. The reason I’m pondering what I might do if I had a hammer is that I’ve lost my hammer. No idea where it’s got to. “I’ve lost my hammer,” I said to Jenny, making us both inexplicably smirk. “Why is that funny?” I asked. “Probably because you’ve made your hammer sound like an everyday essential,” said Jenny. Well, I did need one today, as I’ve got a load of cable clips to hammer into a skirting board in order to make the progress of human beings down my hallway less fraught with danger.

I went out to buy a hammer. It felt wrong, somehow. I loitered in the aisles of the hardware store for about 5 minutes, working up some courage. “Can I help you, sir?” “Er, [cough], yes, well I’m just after a hammer, really, nothing special, just a bog-standard hammer.” When you ask someone for a hammer, you feel that they’re looking at you, wondering who you’re going to kill with your new hammer. I couldn’t just buy a hammer, so I leaned over and picked up a random matchpot of paint, which appears to be called Nude Glow. “Yes, I’ll have this as well,” I said. I was offered a choice of two hammers, one of which was only £2.50. It was quite a small hammer, but it could definitely do the job. “That one,” I said, resisting the temptation to pick it up and see how it might feel to swipe it through the air and crack the skull of an unruly teenager. “So, that’s the Am-Tech 8oz Claw Hammer, and…. Nude Glow?” “Er, yes. Thank you.”

The cable is now secured. I’m happy with my hammer. If anyone would like my Nude Glow, it’s going up on eBay shortly.