SO DID you spend the Bank Holiday dicing with death? And that doesn't mean parachuting, bungee jumping or driving down the A1 with your eyes shut.

No. Nearly as dangerous as all those is DIY, which is almost guaranteed to take you straight to Casualty.

Why do we do it? Ever since Barry Bucknell opened his toolbox on black and white television, we've had this urge to climb up ladders, knock nails in, walls down and put up shelves. More than any country in Europe, we are constantly meddling with our homes. The continentals clearly have much more interesting things to do with their free time...

The novelty was just beginning to wear off a few years ago. Then along came Laurence Llewelyn Bowen with his glossy curls and outrageous colour schemes and everyone leapt into action again. And as for Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock - they must be personally responsible for the fact that B&Q were expecting to sell 130 miles of timber decking over the weekend.

And a million litres of white paint - which is an awful lot of people tottering on top of a ladder, brush in hand, wiping a blob of silk finish from their eyes, while someone else says: "You've missed a bit."

But we should stop this practice immediately. It's amazing this nanny government hasn't already done so.

For DIY kills 70 people a year - generally in falls from ladders or accidents with electrical tools such as hedge strimmers, power drills and lawn mowers. My dozy husband nearly killed himself once when he plugged himself into the National Grid via the lawnmower. It's easily done.

Then there are the frayed nerves, the spilt paint, the arguments over colour schemes and the 549,600 people who end up in A & E each year because they've hammered their thumbs instead of the nail. Jolly painful. I know. I've done that too.

Nearly 50,000 people pull muscles, twist ligaments, sprain wrists or generally collapse in a heap when using bits of them they've never done before. Then there are the 333,000 people who gash themselves so badly they need stitches.

It's a minefield out there. You're better off playing with the traffic...

With the lighter evenings now the clock's gone forward and with two more bank holidays coming up, there's a research project going ahead to see how much the accident rate soars. From past experience, doctors predict it will be high.

We wouldn't think of doing our own dentistry, or butchering our own sheep in the back garden, or running our own telephone service. Some things, by and large, are better left to professionals. And that includes house maintenance.

So if the light nights are tempting you up a ladder with a hammer, please think again and get a man in.

It might cost you a bit more - but it will save the NHS millions.

JANUARY 1, 2000, or even 2001, was always going to be an artificial break with the past. Eras do not end simply because of an arbitrary date on a calendar. And most of us woke up from our Millennium celebrations with an anti-climactic sense that despite all the hoo hah, nothing really had changed at all.

But now it has. The death of the Queen Mother really is the end of an era, a last link with the past finally severed. For good or ill, the old way of doing so many things will now be relegated to history.

But there is something of the Queen Mother that we should all take on board and that really is a lesson to us all - and that was her ability to enjoy life, to still be alert and interested and intrigued and delighted by life, right up to the end.

Granted, her life was more privileged than most, but there are many rich and privileged old ladies who are as miserable and sour as sin.

So by all means sign books of condolence, wear black and look mournful, but surely the best way to mark the Queen Mother's passing would be to drink a large gin to her memory - and live our own lives with such enthusiasm.

THE Good News this week is that we are spending less time than ever on housework. Partly because we have so many more gizmos and gadgets to do it for us, but partly because we are not as houseproud as we were.

Well, that's a relief. We are no longer judged by the shine on our windows, the sparkle on our sinks.

And maybe it's because the men are doing a bit more - only an hour more a week in the last 40 years, but it's a start.

Professional women do least of all and working class women do most. Well, of course - as well as their own, they're probably going out cleaning the professionals' homes as well.

In my time I've worked as a cleaner and employed one too. Now I muddle along in my own version of chaos, with occasional splurges.

Reassuring to know that these days, that makes me absolutely average.