Graham Carter - the voice of age and experience

After decades of DIY and weeks of working on big building projects in our garden, I reckon my tool kit is now pretty much complete.

They are all there: Hammers, screwdrivers, drills and saws, plus what no DIYer should ever be without, which is plenty of swear words.

You never know when you are going to need one, and just lately I have needed them a lot.

We all know you should have one handy for when the hammer hits your effing thumb, and the other day I needed a few more when I tripped over the effing lawn roller and gashed my effing ankle.

I was still getting my money’s worth, an hour later, when I had to put my leg up because it had swollen up like an effing tennis ball.

In these situations swearing is so much more comforting than an ice pack or a plaster. But it’s not just useful for injuries. I found it priceless when I spent ages getting all my other tools ready for a big job and as soon as I started doing some work it started to effing rain and I had to effing put them all away again.

And of course swear words are particularly useful when part of the project goes wrong.

Unless you are some kind of master craftsman or you are unnaturally patient and diligent, this happens quite often when you are doing jobs around the house or in the garden.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been sawing wood, only to find that I had accidentally cut off the wrong effing bit.

Even worse: drilling a piece of wood and finding the effing bit breaking off in the effing hole, and can you effing believe it?

That’s effing Sod’s Law, that is, which is appropriate as ‘sod’ was considered swearing when I was a kid, but not now.

If you are a young DIYer you may be wondering where you can get hold of suitable swear words, because they don’t seem to stock them at B&Q, which is strange because my sweary mate says they have every effing tool under the effing sun.

You could always ask someone who works on the buildings to lend you some as I have noticed they have far more than they need.

I was grateful to the lads working on next door’s extension, for instance, who kindly came up with some ideas when they upset all the cement in their effing wheelbarrow.

But I don’t think young people are going to be short of colourful words on account of the internet, where swearing is rife, and people have little shame about using words once considered extreme.

We swear far more than we used to, but we need to be careful, because you can have too much of a good thing.

I feel sorry for people who swear all the time, and therefore have no profanities to channel their pain into when they are doing DIY, or they stub their toes, or the inevitable happens and England go out on penalties to the effing Germans.

My only worry is that swearing has become too commonplace, and formerly shocking words are losing their edge. Because blunt tools are no use to anybody.

My fear is that some people, including those who should know better, are resorting to words that have insulting racial connotations or are aimed at disrespecting people with disabilities - you know the ones I mean - and thinking that is an acceptable alternative.

Well it #>?%$!@ isn’t.