Tim Dowling: ‘My wife has begun to invite people round to the new house’

I arrive home from a literary festival at lunchtime, ditch my bag and head out again. The electrician’s van is out front when I get back at 6pm. In the kitchen, two new pendant lights are hanging above the table. My wife walks in. “Kitch wants to speak to you,” she says. Kitch is the electrician.

Kitch walks in and stands next to me. He places his fists on the table, knuckles down, and shakes his head ruefully. “I’ve had difficult words with your Mrs,” he says.

“About what?” I say.

“For God’s sake, Tim,” he says, “when you come in, you unpack the bag straight away.”

“Exactly,” my wife says.

“You don’t just leave it lying there,” Kitch says. “If I did that, I’d be sleeping in the van.”

“I had to go back out,” I reply. “On business.”

“How long does it take?” he says. “Just unload it straight into the machine.”

“Some of it was clean,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter, Tim! Wash it again! She’ll never know.”

“OK,” I say, “I get it.”

“Just keep her supplied with laundry, and she’ll be happy.”

“What?” my wife says.

My wife has begun to invite people round to the new house. Guests are required to be enthusiastic about the layout, the aspect and the area. How enthusiastic is not specified, but if you’re not clapping and weeping in the manner of a North Korean official following Kim Jong-un around a launch site, you probably need to be shown the colour for the bannister spindles again.

Most guests are enthusiastic; others less so. Some go missing in transit. “Replacement bus,” texts one, in response to the question “where r u?” It’s a reminder that when you live in the suburbs, your house gets an hour farther away at weekends. My wife is defensive about journey times, and has no patience with people who arrive at the door looking theatrically road-weary. “Oh come on,” she says. “It’s Acton, not Surrey.”

She’s also worried that the birds haven’t come. Three feeders offering a variety of seeds and nuts hang outside the kitchen, but the finches haven’t turned up.

“I think they’re too close to the window,” I say.

“There’s feed on the ground underneath,” she says. “Someone’s been eating it.”

“That might be parakeets,” I say.

“It had better not be parakeets,” she says.

On my phone, I have a minute-long video of a fat parakeet hanging upside down from the middle feeder and spraying seed everywhere, but I haven’t shown it to my wife, because I don’t want to upset her. I’m saving it for a time when I do want to upset her.

On Friday afternoon, Kitch is back to install two more lights. I am deliberately loading the washing machine while he works, but I can’t see what I’m doing. “It’s so dark in here,” I say, poking my head through the curtain between the laundry area and the kitchen. “Where’s the light?”

“It doesn’t work,” my wife says. “I told you about it last week.”

“Huh,” I say. “If only we had access to some kind of, I don’t know, a person with specialist knowledge of this sort of thing. A qualified…”

“Kitch!” my wife shouts. Kitch comes downstairs.

“This light,” I say. Kitch steps through the curtain and scrutinises the bare overhanging bulb. He taps it twice, and it lights up. “No charge for that,” he says.

The next morning, I wake up with a wall-mounted bedside lamp shining in my face. I forgot to turn it off, overcome by the sheer novelty of having a wall-mounted bedside lamp.

“Christ,” my wife says. “We’ve got people coming round again. You’ll have to go to the butcher.”

“That’s good,” I say. “Then we can mention there’s a butcher.”

“And the supermarket,” she says. “I’ll make you a list.”

“OK,” I say.

“I’m out this afternoon, so you can cook,” she says.

“Fine,” I say.

“For once,” she says.

I lean over and reach for my phone. “I’ve got a video to show you,” I say.