At the age of 58, I’ve bought my first drill. Can it make me a new man? | Adrian Chiles

Bored with my DIY hopelessness, I’ve decided it’s time I learned some basics, writes Adrian Charles

I bought a drill. It is yellow. It is my first drill. I bought it because I’m 59 next month and thought it was about time. It’s nearly a half a century since I joined the rest of the world in giving up on myself when it came to practical skills. My brother, who is younger, was good at that stuff, which I wasn’t. He was also very good at Lego, which I wasn’t. What I was good at was unclear. Reading, possibly. Anyway, he was the practical one and I wasn’t and that was the end of it. And, in the way of these things, this truth got truer as time went on.

And I’ve got sick of it, not in the sense of feeling emasculated or anything, just bored by my hopelessness, bored of bothering and/or paying people to do things. I don’t want to do anything particularly advanced. I just want to be able to drill a hole.

“What do you want to use it for?” asked the bloke in the shop. I told him that underneath it all I wanted to address lifelong self-esteem issues, but in the short term I’d settle for being able to drill a hole. He looked at me a bit funny but sold me the yellow drill and a case with no fewer than a hundred bits in it. A hundred! My place is going to resemble a Swiss cheese.

I spent a week fondling my new yellow drill. I also opened up the little plastic attache case containing the century of bits. And then closed it again.

To force the issue, I bought this rail thing that needed screwing into (onto? I dunno) a wall. I dreaded its arrival. When it came, I panicked, so I called Gary. Gary’s an old friend who’s built many things using many drills. He showed me what to do and gave me some special screws for hollow walls. These things, once they’ve gone in, out of sight they open out like umbrellas! Can you believe it?

And I did it. Three screws in each of two plates attaching the rail to the wall. Great – but then it turned out I’d put the plates in the wrong place, so off it all had to come. Furthermore, the umbrella screws couldn’t be extracted because, well, the umbrellas made that impossible.

So, an inauspicious start. But a start. And I’ve used two of my 100 bits. Ninety-eight to go. All I’ve made so far is a terrible mess, but it feels so good to have a drill of one’s own.

• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist