It’s a weird time of year. It’s windy, there are no waves, no meaningful sport is being played and polling day is looming, which means soon we face the daunting challenge of finally having to tell Kevin Rudd and John Howard apart.

It has been enough to drive me crazy.

How crazy?

Well, on the weekend, I covered my house in oil.

To be honest, it didn’t all go on the house. A good proportion of it went on my feet and my clothing and under my fingernails and over occasional ants and in my eye.

And when I say “house”, I am only talking about the outside wooden bits, of which there are more than you first think.

This is particularly so if you don’t think much at all beyond what bakery items to collect for the family on the return from a pleasant Saturday morning escape to the hardware store.

Once you finish your sausage roll and vanilla slice and commence oiling outside wooden bits at your house, it is very difficult to stop, much to the despair of slow-moving ants.

Not only does the oil brush with the numerous non-target areas mentioned previously – and the one I forgot, which is the human navel – it quite literally gets under your skin.

This causes a chemical reaction to take place in the body – which in my opinion is irresponsibly absent from the safety information on the side of the tin – whereby you simply can’t say no to un-oiled timber, even the chewed bail from the kids’ cricket set while it is still draped from the dog’s mouth.

I think this might be because the substance goes on so easily and is also quite forgiving for a frustrated painter like myself with a habit for straying outside the lines.

A rag soaked in turps serves as a magic eraser for most indiscretions as you toil through the weekend’s every daylight hour with a crazed look in your eye brought about by the peculiar addiction to the task, and partly because surplus Wattyl has found its way into your tear ducts.

Traditionally, my children haven’t liked it when I wear the red hat.

When I don the faded terry towelling number – my traditional outdoors working hat – I have been known to take on an unpleasant persona which they call Mr Cranky Head.

Mr Cranky Head appears when I am trying to read important instructions or calculate complex mathematical formulas on the dirt near the sand pit with a broken-off piece of Tonka truck, and I am being bombarded with extracurricular questions.

The eight-year-old talks the most.

If we belonged to a culture in which children were called after environmental phenomena which reflected their personalities, then we would rename him Talks Like a River.

He is a constant babbler and no amount of shushing will stop his whooshing.

At any given time he has several crucial issues on his mind which need immediate airing regardless of whether or not I am struggling with the complexities of reattaching the folding clothesline to the wall because I put it on upside-down the first time.

These range from pondering how many times the average person might fall out of bed in their lifetime, to whether it would be feasible for a community to utilise a network of waterslides as public transport, to whether I would still love him if he played for Collingwood.

And there’s one question he usually knows the answer to before asking, not that it ever stops him trying.

Q: Dad, can I help?

A: Mate, you can help by just being quiet.

However, on the weekend, it didn’t work out like that and I think there was more to it than the fact that I traded the old red hat for a new blue one that came as a promotional gift with the oil.

It was a defining moment in our relationship.

I gave him a brush and put him in charge of the steps.

When he finished the steps, he did the letter box and then the railings on the balcony and then the timber garden edging.

Only darkness prevented him from tackling the treehouse – a job which has been pencilled in for first thing this Saturday.

Don’t get me wrong. At no stage throughout the weekend did Hank’s helpful deeds inhibit his talking.

For him, a silence is an irresistible canvas to be splashed with words.

It’s the same feeling we both now get when our brushes are primed and there’s untreated wood ahead.