April is the sweetest month, wrote Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. Five centuries later, T. S. Eliot countered with, “April is the cruellest month.” A slight discord there. And yet, the two poets would probably agree that the most boring month of all is August.

True, the first week of August has the snap and snazzle of a magic wand: the sky is a throbbing blue, a siesta lingers on like a childhood dream, and the beach is a prelude to the tinkling of ice swimming in a frilly drink.

But then August layers it on too thickly. The heat becomes unbearable. Ice cream is no longer a treat because it’s all you’re eating: one scoop a day is something to look forward to, but one tub is just food. Time becomes as annoyingly slow as a septuagenarian tortoise crossing the road.

Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant- Mitchell Kapor

And what does a man do when he has too much time on his hands? Yes, you guessed right: DIY. One hour of watching You Tube step-by-step guides gave me plenty of ideas. I would build a roof garden, which in turn would camouflage the launching and landing pad for my drone. Ambitious? Yes. But practical as well, because I would start by painting a staircase: something easy which would get me in the mood and give me the manly credibility of hard skin on my fingers.

The problem with You Tube is that it makes things look very easy and clean. A rooftop garden in 12 easy steps? Got it. Painting a staircase? The video is just 10 seconds long and not a spilled drop of paint in sight. And it’s not only that things look easy – even though in real life I can hold a hammer with difficulty, the DIY experts on You Tube convinced me that I’m an expert too. It’s just that I didn’t know it.

My feet were soon back on the ground. First literally, after I fell off the ladder and spent a couple of hours massaging my ankle. Then mentally, after I caught myself making excuses to pause my handiwork every five minutes: first to play with the dog, then to have a well deserved (in my mind) cold drink, and finally to admit to myself that I would never make it to the finish line. Not a metaphorical one, but a real finish line, which I painted at the top of the staircase as a proverbial carrot – after all, encouragement never did a pimple of harm to anybody.

There’s one thing which is good about You Tube. There’s a video for anything, including one to help me convince the handyman whom I called up that, as soon as he’s finished with the painting, he can start on the roof garden. Even though he has never built one.

“But of course you can build it,” I insist. “Let me show you a video.”

techeditor@timesofmalta.com