A rare spare night, where I'm not gigging, spending time with the girlfriend, working late, or being away, goes something like this.

I drove away from the office and went to a soft furnishings store where I bought 6 blinds. 3 were roman blinds for the bay window in my living room and 3 were venetian blinds for my housemate's bedroom bay window. I was using measurements which had been drawn by him, photographed on his camera phone and then emailed. This is the modern world and also a product of a busy man who had spent less than 30 minutes in his own house in the last 12 days. (I had dropped home from the airport on Friday night long enough to get depressed about how much needed doing, get a shower, shout at the empty house and then drive away for the weekend.)

Following time in the girly soft furnishings store, I headed to the manliest store I know - Screwfix. I needed screws. Of course I did. I needed number 4s 30mm. Yum. I also wanted to buy a concealed door closer in the hope that it would contain the tool necessary to keep the existing door closers at bay as I refitted them. This it did, which was handy.

Then I went home and started the DIY. The order is not completely important. Here's what I did, though. I trimmed the bottom off 8 doors, two of which were room doors, the other 6 were wardrobe doors. All of these had been removed either by the carpet fitters or, in the case of the wardrobe doors, by myself in an attempt to make carpet fitting possible a few days ago. The fact that the house moved forward by carpet, but back by doors being on their hinges had been bothering me. Trimming the bottoms off the doors involved use of the circular saw, hand saw (to get the last few mills off the door in the case of the room doors, since the circular saw wasn't quite wide enough), and sander to stop the ends of the wood catching on the carpet after cutting.

The doors were rehung, a two man job in the case of the room doors. Done with two men, I should point out.

Then I hung the venetian blinds, discovering to my chagrin that the roman blinds were not long enough.

Then I attached the new thermostat to where it should belong.

Then I prepared my own bedroom for use again - vacuuming the new carpet and moving the bed back into place, along with other furniture.

Finally, I was able to restock my DVD shelf and collapse into the bed to watch "Doctor Who: The Movie" - a shocking insight into how bad Doctor Who would have been if America had been allowed to turn it into Star Trek.

Somewhere in the mix, I found time to grab a salad from M&S.

That's my life at the moment. Busy, fun, but draining.