Oh Twitter, I am so grateful there are Dads to keep us going through these strange & stressful times.

My partner’s parents are in quite srs lockdown because they’re high-risk people in a high-risk area—they’re getting their food delivered so they literally haven’t left the house in 6 weeks.

They’re doing okay though.

In the new class system of “has a garden” & “doesn’t have a garden” they happen to be in the “have” rather than “have not” category.

Which is why, I assume, they haven’t killed each other before now.

Apparently, they’re doing a lot of gardening & my partner’s dad is getting into DIY.

They’ve lived in the house since before all their kids were born so, as you may imagine, over that time they’ve accumulated a lot of crap.

& my partner’s dad decided that, in order to fully embrace his needs as a fully-fledged DIY-performing man, he first needed...

...A WORKBENCH.

A workbench he will build, as primitive man surely built his first workbench, with his bare hands & the remains of 30 years of abandoned household projects & garden furniture.

A workbench that will be the beating heart of every piece of DIY to follow.

O! This workbench.

I’m pretty sure Solomon built The Temple of God with less ceremony.

But, y’know, concerned about the effects of too much social isolation on two married humans who don’t act as though they’re always super keen on each other at the best of times…

… we reluctantly became part of the life & development of a workbench.

#teamworkbench

Days pass.

We receive a regular updates about the workbench.

(Very close friend of mine had a baby recently: I have fewer pictures of HER ACTUAL HUMAN CHILD than I have of a workbench in various stages of conception).

We are asked to provide feedback on the workbench.

(I literally cannot imagine anything we are less qualified to give feedback on. Except maybe … brain surgery? But I dunno. How complicated can brain surgery actually be?)

We videochat with the workbench.

We even participate in peculiar group fantasy sessions about the glittering Gatsby-esque future that awaits us once the workbench is completed.

The projects that can be undertaken. The things that will be built. THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS THAT WILL BECOME POSSIBLE.

Anyway. He finishes the fucking workbench.

And I will admit, it’s a decent workbench. I mean, okay, I wouldn’t know a decent workbench if it tried to have sex with me.

But it looks like … like I imagine a workbench is supposed to look?

Solid. Functional. The angles are fully not non-Euclidian.

The legs are a piece of dismantled climbing frame.

The top is strips of left-over wood, each piece lovingly … wooded … to a perfect fit.

There’s even one of those … tool things? Like a tool? That is attached to the side of the workbench? For, like, doing some DIY type activity with?

THERE’S ONE OF THOSE OKAY?

We dutifully admire the workbench.

Everyone is very happy.

Talk turns to the next project.

(I make frantic gesticulations to indicate that I wish to be excluded from the narrative of the next project: I am ignored)

My partner’s mother is very excited.

This is more DIY than she has ever got in her life.

She has a made A LIST.

My partner’s Dad is also very excited.

Because he has MADE A WORKBENCH & is as full of joy as Sweeny Todd with a straight razor in his hand.

This is what Shakespeare was getting at when he wrote, what a piece of work is a man’s workbench.

So. Yes. The next project.

The next project is…

…my partner’s dad coming to the slow realisation that he has used all the leftover wood and metal in the house to make the fucking workbench in the first place

& has no way of getting any more because the whole country is on lockdown.

The end.