Friends are telling me I’ve changed. I ignored them first of all. They say now that I’m working inside sitting down and not outside standing up I’m a different person.

They say I don’t wear my trousers as low as I did while on the building sites and now I drink frappacinos instead of sweet milky teas.

I argued with them, but yesterday something happened to make me realise that I had changed.

The new Spring 2008 Screw Fix catalogue (the builders bible) came through my door and do you know what?

I wasn’t as excited as I used to be.

I used to read it cover to cover as soon as it came out, making wish lists of everything I was going to buy, drooling over the affordable low cost 14.4v drill/drivers.

But now I just flicked through, pausing only briefly to look at sheds.

Maybe we’ve both changed because now I see that on page 131 they’re selling a 320Gb internal hard drive, maybe it’s for the new line of digital cement mixers.