This can happen: you find yourself up on a stool tonging moss from crevices in the aluminium windows, and I’m talking inside the house.

It’s in the order of nose-picking: wrong and thrilling at the same time.

Fired by that novel experience, I got out the sewing machine to hem the new bed cover. The man of the house strolled by on his way to the kettle. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just out of curiosity, would it ever occur to you to replace shabby curtains or … hem a bedspread?’

Blink, blink. ‘No.’

‘What if you lived on your own?’

‘Well, sooner or later I suppose I’d have to compromise.’ (His peccable aesthetic, I presume.)

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d get new curtains.’

‘How would you, exactly?’

‘Um. I’d measure up the gap and go to the drapery. Do they have those? Or Spotlight. And I’d tell the women the measurements.’

‘Yes?‘

‘And I’d bring the material home … and weep over it.’

Bududuudududududud (sewing machine ) ‘Oh.’

‘No, actually, I’d probably end up nailing it to the ceiling.’

Bududududdddddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr