8A. Home maintenance & Work____Do It Yourself - the great British pastime____[Latinate]

It sounds like a bomb has exploded in the house next door. No, it hasn’t. It’s Sunday and all the neighbours are at it again. Miss Allday is clearing her living room of its contents. Mr Shaw is connecting an electricity supply to his greenhouse. His plants must be getting cold. Even Mrs Taylor, the piano teacher, has changed to car maintenance for the day. Mr Wise is really organised. He’s employed a team of builders to extend his downstairs bathroom. I hope he’s got planning permission. Last week, the same team were decorating his kitchen. He dismisses them from Monday to Saturday and then on the day of rest they’re all at it again.

Whatever happened to quiet contemplation? God took almost a week to build heaven and earth, but the people in this street think they can do it in a day! No wonder church attendances are falling!

This great country of ours no longer produces good Christians. Everybody’s too busy erecting garden sheds or adding rooms to their properties to accommodate invisible guests. If a bomb really exploded next door, nobody would call the fire brigade. Mr Wise and his team would just open the nearest fire hydrant and they would extinguish it themselves. Come to think of it, I could probably make use of one of these amateur teams. My washing machine has just stopped working. Damn, it’s Sunday... I’ll have to wait till tomorrow before I can call out the service engineer.