Before his redundancy Lee Hanson was an international Human Resources Director. Now, in addition to occasional writing and his househusband duties, he works part-time as a Human Resources consultant.

Dad, when you've got a spare five minutes..." One of the inescapable realities of having time on your hands is that other people spare no effort in finding ways of trying to keep you fully occupied. Cast aside all notions of putting your feet up with the books that you had always promised yourself you'd read, forget picking up that organ player's self-tuition manual (yet again!) and under no circumstances make any plans for a few leisurely lunchtime hours in the pub with your fellow redundant mates. Daytime television is mind-numbing? Don't ask me, because I've never found the time to watch. Between them, my wife and son have had more success than half a dozen highly-funded government departments when it comes to job creation schemes. I suppose that it does help if your efforts are focused on a single compliant target.

Perhaps it's really all my own fault - at an early stage in our marriage I demonstrated that I was not a complete disaster with a screwdriver, hammer or saw in my hands. This was not so much due to any special DIY flair but rather to me being a beneficiary of a practical technical school education. All those hours spent in the woodwork and metalwork shops finally paid off. Even now, whenever I pick up a saw or a chisel, I can still hear the woodwork teacher's mantras: "Saw in the waste", "Both hands behind the cutting edge". This hectoring may have seemed irritating at the time but it was effective - Elastoplast would have gone out of business years ago if they had needed to rely on me cutting myself with hand tools. Any individual in class not paying attention and who had not "sawed in the waste" was likely to be despatched by the woodwork master to his colleague in the next door workshop to ask for the "putting on machine". Whilst there, he may well meet up with a fellow inattentive classmate who had been sent for a "long weight". Only after standing outside the teacher's door for an hour would the penny drop when this idiot realised that a "long weight" sounded exactly the same as a "long wait" - which is exactly what he had got.

Just when I thought that my wife had exhausted her list of "little jobs for you to do", my son picked up the baton. He could, of course, have chosen to buy a brand new house, freshly painted with all mod cons and all systems go. Instead, he decided on something from the mid-seventies that was clearly showing its vintage and was in urgent need of attention. In the space of two weeks, 80 per cent of my tools, materials, ladders, dustsheets etc. made the transition from my garage to his. As usual, the quick "five-minute" jobs turned out to take nearer five days but I did manage to stretch my repertoire to embrace laminated floor-laying and a bit of plumbing. We are told that there is a national shortage of plumbers and the sky's the limit on what they can earn. There are tales of city bankers quitting their high-pressure jobs in order to enrol in intensive plumbing classes at the local technical college (probably now called a university). I'm not so sure about the technical skill requirements but after spending half a day under a sink, I'm convinced that nothing less than an NVQ level 3 in contortionism will suffice. This rules out yet another alternative career for me.

Having only brought 80 per cent of the contents of my garage with me, it was inevitable that the particular tool, fixing, or material that I actually needed was to be found in the remaining 20 per cent. Sometimes it was far simpler to pop to the nearby B&Q store than to go back home. In fact, given the amount of time that I have spent at B&Q over the past few months, I would not be surprised to receive an invitation to the staff Christmas party since I am convinced that my attendance figures are higher than those of many of their part-time employees.

DIY may appear to be a lonely occupation to some but it has enabled me to widen my circle of acquaintances considerably: not only am I now on first-name terms with the double glazers, builders, bathroom fitters and electricians, I also know their tea, coffee, milk and sugar preferences together with the football teams they support and the names of their kids. They were all generous with their advice and encouragement other than the rather standoffish British Gas engineer - that was his loss since he was not invited to join my tea and biscuits club. My regular and substantial purchases of milk, sugar and teabags also meant that I was soon on friendly terms with the owners of the local mini-market I hope they didn't think that it was all for me.

As the project neared completion, I was starting to feel at a bit of a loss with the prospect of hauling all my DIY equipment back home and no practical tasks to challenge me. I need not have worried. "Dad, when you have a spare five minutes, we were thinking of giving the kitchen a makeover...."