If you were looking for a political thesis, unfortunately you have come to the wrong place. Despite the title, this blog isn’t about problems involving David Cameron and his Cabinet Minister colleagues. It is about the difficulties I encountered when building an item of bedroom furniture from Argos.

Claire has had a bedside cabinet for some time. It was mutually decided that I should have a matching one – something to do with the fact we’re soon to be married, but also because since moving into the house, the furniture alongside my bed, used for holding the lamp and clock, has consisted of an old wooden chair and a cheap stool which appears to be made from cardboard.

Therefore, we ordered a cabinet from Argos. It was delivered in a big box, flat-packed. This big box had been sat in our front room since New Year. Earlier this week, we thought it was about time we built the cabinet.

We had been putting off building the cabinet for so long because we thought it would take ages and would be very difficult to put together. We were not wrong. The instructions were so complex, I think only Stephen Hawking or one of the boffins on The Chase would be able to work them out.

It took two nights to build the damn thing. The first evening was spent putting the drawer compartment of the cabinet together. This involved the use of numerous screws, pieces of wood and countless swear words. In the end, we gave up and went to bed. We weren’t being lazy. Had we continued, we would have been building all night and due to tiredness, I would have inadvertently ended up screwing a piece of wood to my head.

Yesterday evening we finished the job. We had Coronation Street on at the same time, where a bus had crashed and was hanging off a cliff. The television therefore distracted us from our building task. This may have been why things went a bit wrong.

I managed to finish building the cabinet. It was frustrating and involved holding half a dozen pieces of wood together, to enable screws and dowels to be attached with exact precision. The penultimate step was to fit the top of the cabinet onto the body. It was then I realised that I had accidentally hammered a wooden dowel into a hole intended for a screw. Oh well, there was another screw. So while it was recommended both sides had screws, the finished product only had one. This meant that the top of the cabinet was loose. If anyone ever lifts the cabinet from the top, it would all fall apart – a bit like my sanity at the time of realising my mistake.

I realised the second problem when I reached the final step of building the cabinet – fitting the drawer to the ‘runner’. This involved attaching a screw to various bits and bobs to prevent the whole thing collapsing like a huge, heavy pack of cards; resulting in a pile of wood and twisted metal. Two screws were provided, only one would work. The reason for this was that I am a tit. Actually, I am not a tit. I am just your everyday man who isn’t a member of Mensa. In short, I misunderstood the incredibly complicated instructions and attached one of the runners the wrong way round.

The cabinet is finished. It is sitting in the bedroom with various personal artefacts adoring its beautiful frame. I use the word ‘beautiful’ in the way Frankenstein may describe his monster. It is an abomination of craftsmanship. If Pinocchio’s creator, Geppetto, was still alive, the sight of my handy work would cause him to vomit with rage.

My greatest piece of work.

These screws were left over. I never did work out what they were for.