© Doc Bland

The urge to DIY is strong among the older blokes
who think they are as agile as when they were younger folks.
Their every day activities pervade the air with noise,
those DIY exponents playing with their grown-up toys.
Their tool belts filled with hammers, chisels, drills, and power saws,
embarking on their projects, they all hasten to their cause.
Among our older gentry, though, there’s no sight that is sadder –
the DIY retiree who is working up a ladder.

The wisdom of their wives is lost as to the roof they climb:
‘I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice, I’ll tell you one more time,
You’re just too wobbly these days to climb past the second rung!’
But wives know protests are quite futile before they’ve begun
as blokes, deaf to entreaties, continue as before,
but they should know such premonition’s nothing to ignore.
Among the older gentry, not much gets their women madder –
the DIY retiree who is working up a ladder.

He’s perched up on the top-most step while painting an old awning,
pretending that he doesn’t hear his wife shout out her warning.
‘Be careful up there, you old fool, you know you are unsteady’.
But with his brush and paint can, he is primed and he is ready.
He balances his weight and reaches out across the void,
an acrobatic feat certain to get his wife annoyed.
One of the older gentry, he turns round to smile down at ‘er –
the DIY retiree who is working up a ladder.

He stops to have a sandwich, seated on a roof-top gable,
pours coffee from his thermos though he doesn’t look too stable.
But he enjoys the view and feels like he is bullet-proof,
surveying all the neighbours from up there high on the roof.
‘It’s going to rain, so come inside,’ his wife calls up to him.
He waves and pours more coffee, fills his cup up to the brim.
One of the older gentry, believing in mind over matter,
the DIY retiree who is working up a ladder.

He hammers in new nails and smacks some rivets into place,
the DIY activity puts smiles upon his face.
But one thing he’s forgotten is that with advancing age
there comes another urge that is just too hard to assuage
and forces him to lay down tools, attempt a quick descent,
and wonder, as he’s hanging there, just where that top rung went.
One of the older gentry, falling, curses his old bladder –
the DIY retiree who was working up a ladder.