These are the days when you get to pick your moment and do something so downright practical and worthwhile it might just last until next year.
And I’m not talking about starting a war with no end goal and hoping others will join in.
I’m talking about something slightly more realistic and useful.
Something like snake-proofing and oiling the verandah deck.
March is a stable democracy of weather.
A time of reliable days when skies can be trusted and you can just get on with things.
I’ve been a verandah man for a long time.
I love verandahs.
They’re like a watchtower among the lawns where you can sit like an old medieval king and survey your ragged kingdom as it stretches into the never-never of double-storey concrete slabs and hedges with sharp and neat trims like hyper-masculine real estate agents’ beards.
A verandah makes you realise that it’s just too easy to let things slide and lose your grip on the never-ending battle to keep decay and algae at the border of things.
Oiling a deck is a task for the optimist.
It says things can be better and there’s a bright, non-slip future ahead, so let’s get down to it and show Mr Trump’s war machine how to get the job done.
First — establish an end goal; in this case, to bring a corrupted and dangerous deck back to the usefulness and tolerance of the western way of life.
Second — clear the deck. A small tactical nuclear weapon would be the quickest, but that would defeat the purpose. Better to simply drag things off and put them somewhere else for the time being.
Third — wash the deck. Get rid of the accumulated years of dust and grime and religious indoctrination.
Fourth — brush the deck with fresh oil, not forgetting those little nooks and crannies where extreme algae might be hiding.
Fifth — let it dry off and look for spots where nuclear mould may be lurking.
Sixth — give the whole deck another covering of oil, making sure your Strait of Hormuz is still open and that you have enough for a final layer to seal the wood and prevent any further infestations of white ant or anti-western behaviour.
To snake-proof the deck, you need a stealth bomber staple gun, secure steel or plastic netting and a good pair of knee pads, because this is a boots-on-ground operation.
There’s no getting away from it — you just have to get down in the dirt and move from pillar to post to bang in those staples and stop any foreign invaders from slithering under the deck and threatening your peace of mind with their poisonous radical right theocracy.
It’s a difficult and grubby task, but whatever you do, don’t ask the neighbours for help.
They’ve got their own problems.
They’ll just think you’re an idiot and never talk to you again.
I now have a smartly refurbished deck that behaves very nicely when the storm clouds gather.
More importantly, it’s free from extreme algae.
Look, I’m not an expert handyman.
I really don’t know my wire staples from my netting pegs or a quality deck oil from a bar of soap.
But I do know how to consult the experts when it comes to planning a verandah deck rescue operation.
So I asked AI.
Surely Donald could have done the same.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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