Château DIY

How we ended up on television

I have been asked to write about this for so long. Its been on my list forever. Being on television was never something we thought we would do. But then again, we never thought we’d own a château or live in France either. This is the story of how it all came to be, how we ended up on Château DIY.

The train screeched to a stop at Watford High Street station, and I was bustled out onto the hot pavement by a sea of forthright women laden with shopping bags. They had places to be, they knew where they were going, and I was in the way, dithering, looking for road signs, trying to work out which way to walk. 

I had been living in London for a couple of months, working as an editorial assistant on a tiny holistic health magazine. Living in a basement flat-share, working for pennies and eagerly taking on any job that meant writing rather than stuffing envelopes or ordering pens. 

I picked my way down the busy high street and eventually found myself outside a window full of crystals and tarot cards. It was dark inside, the air heavy with incense. I was here for a crystal ball reading. 

I was skeptical, unwilling to believe that anyone could see anything about my life or my future inside a crystal ball. But I had a column to write, so I sat in the scented gloom and tried to open my mind. 

My psychic, Faye, was kind, easing me in gently, telling me all the usual things about long lives and great loves, while I wondered how I was going to make an interesting article out of all this.

And then she mentioned guardian angels and I started thinking that perhaps we had now really reached the wrong side of wooo wooo for me. She began to describe a man called Henry, perhaps my great-grandfather she said, he walked with stick and had a small dog that followed always at his heels. The goosebumps crept up my arm. My great-grandfather was indeed called Henry, and he always had a small dog at his heels.

She told me many other things, many of which I have forgotten, but one that stuck in my mind was that one day I would be on television. I scoffed at this to my friends later. “She might have been right about the guardian angel, but it’s not such a leap is it, magazine journalist to tv journalist, not really a prediction is it?” I said. “I can’t think of anything I would rather do less, television is definitely not for me, so she’s definitely wrong about that.”