For the task shy male, its a good idea to hurry past Discount Decore, which is situated at 159 High Street, between Glamour UK Ltd, which was long known to me as the mysterious shop of a thousand closing down sales at 157, and Fashion World at 161 the High Street. If you are lucky, and you have a female partner, you can distract her by pointedly staring over the road at the lingerie in the window of Benny Dee's. If you are on your own, just feel ashamed of yourself and shuffle on by, like you did when you went past DIY London. If it really is a bad back holding up the project and you have managed to walk this far, you could try Mr Zhong over the road.

Discount Decore is the kind of shop that you can't help but find that essential but missing odd bath plug, pot of paint, tool, sprocket, widget or gadget that would otherwise successfully hold up that DIY project you have been avoiding. Annoyingly for those of us who want to keep the excuses about these things going on for ever, it is open at convenient times over the weekend to enable these items to be purchased. There are thousands of bits and pieces of hardware which I have no idea what to do with, but they have a couple of guys in the shop who, enfuriatingly, seem to know exactly what they are talking about and where the necessary bits are to be found. If they don't have it here, you can always try Homecare Heating and Plumbing Supplies on Forest Road.

Tel 020 8521 1999