1. Visit a
large generic DIY Store.
2. It should ideally be a large industrial shed, filled with a bewildering
range of products.
3. Walk past the aisles of paint, miniature candyfloss makers, bags
of cement, fireworks and Victorian shower cubicles. Ignore them,
however competitively priced, for they play no part in this tale,
save as set dressing.
4. Ask an assistant where the garden tools are located.
5. Find them, and select a wooden handled garden fork.
6. Buy it, and drive home.
7. Find your electric drill in the back of a cupboard.
8. Look for the charger. Remove it from a plastic bag, and spend
at least 15 minutes untangling it from a charger for the video camera
you haven’t used since last Christmas, another for a mobile
phone you had three years ago, and some other unidentifiable cables.
9. While your drill is charging, attempt to locate a set of drill
bits. This will probably take a while.
10. Also find some long screws. These need to be long enough to
go through the handle of the fork and into the wall. So they probably
need to be longer than the ones you have at home.
11. Drive back to the DIY store. It’s probably Sunday, and
it’s likely that the store closes unexpectedly early. You
may find the next instructions will shift forward to the next weekend.
12. Purchase screws – and get some rawl plugs while you are
there. And maybe some batteries. You can never have too many batteries.
13. Once you are back home, place your fork on a flat surface. Imagine
it rotated 90 degrees, and hanging a coat on it. This thought process
is helping you to decide where to drill the holes.
14. Drill two holes through the handle of the fork. The holes need
to be big enough to slide the screws through.
15. Choose a wall to fix your soon-to-be coat hook to.
16. Push the screws through the freshly drilled holes in your fork
into the surface of the wall. This marks the position you need to
drill into the wall and insert the rawl plugs.
17. Once you have done that, you are ready to screw your fork into
position.
18. This is a big moment, so pause before you do it. Think ‘I
am re-tasking a tool’ to yourself.
19. Fix the fork.
20. Hang your coat up.
21. A few days later, the attitude of your partner to your impressive
DIY project should be faint disapproval. He or She should rather
have an Eames ‘Hang it All’ coat hook purchased from
the Conran Shop for £133.
22. Over time, your Fork Hook will come to symbolise some unnameable
hole in your relationship with your partner.
