Why I’ve built my own coffin

I have inadvertently built my own coffin. I’m rather chuffed with it. It wasn’t meant to be a coffin. It’s actually a boat. My son found a YouTube video on how to make one, and although these videos are normally created by practical men for other practical men (I am the world’s most impractical man), I watched it and thought: ‘Even I could do that.’ It’s essentially an open-top plywood box, eight feet by two feet by one foot, with a 45-degree angle at the front to make it look slightly less like a box.

Needless to say, my son got bored after the third nail, but I soldiered on and, seven bathrooms’ worth of sealant later, I was the proud owner of a punt. As I pushed off from the riverbank on the vessel’s maiden voyage, my partner seemed shocked that, yes, it was in fact floating.

As I meandered past, this time lying down, she said: ‘It looks like you’re in a coffin.’