The story of my autumn so far has been
that of a perfect storm of crippling financial
outlays. The boiler broke. Fair play, it was at
least 30 and probably 40 years old. It didn’t
stop the new one costing over a thousand quid
though. Then, the first serious rain revealed
leaks in both the roof of the main room, which
is single storey, and the roof of the main bit of
the house. Rather sweetly, like an old married
couple, the two roofs must have made a pact
to give up the ghost together. We’ve had
buckets on the floor for a month while
various roofers offer quotes.
Next, Nicola announced that the window
frames couldn’t be bodged (rather well bodged,
I should say, by her) any longer, but required
expert attention, if not replacement. Thus, the
visits from roofers have been accompanied by
visits from joiners. Also, there’s a long-standing
problem with both the wiring and the
pipework. The house is 200 years old and
we’ve lived in it for 26 of them. These issues
were all going to arrive sooner or later.
The trouble is, they’ve all arrived at once.
The downstairs telly broke. As in, just
stopped working, all attempts at resuscitation
employing all four remotes unsuccessful. My
wife rang three shops claiming to be TV repair
shops but none of them, it turned out, actually
repair TVs. “Chuck it away and get a new one,”
was the gist of their advice. Not what you’d
expect from a TV repair shop, is it? Contrary
to their core business model, you’d have
thought, wouldn’t you? Still, that’s what
they said.
We decided to ship the telly from our
bedroom downstairs and replace the one
upstairs with a bigger one. Nicola whipped out
her trusty tape measure, which she is rarely
without, and told me to hold one end while I
lay in bed one Saturday morning. Although
I briefly scented the possibility of some
exciting Fifty Shades-style action, possibly with
a Homes Under the Hammer kink, it turned out
she wanted to measure the distance from my
eyeline propped up on the pillows to the
screen. I guessed it was 10ft. She said 12.
It was 11ft 11in.
“So we should get 55 inches,” Nicola
announced, her research having established
the optimum screen size for different viewing
ranges. “We need to go to John Lewis.”
“What, an actual shop?” I whined.
“Me as well?”
Yes indeed, Nicola explained, an actual
shop, you as well. For a big-ticket item like atelly, she insisted, I had to provide not my
usual negligible distracted assent, but actual
input based on my actual physical presence
in an actual retail outlet made of actual bricks
and mortar.
Long story short, a couple of hours later
another £800 had been savagely vacuumed out
of my wallet. Let no one say I’m not doing my
bit to restart the national economy.
Besides these biggies, with the mummy (the
windows) and daddy (the roofs) of them all yet
to come, I’ve also been shipping out a lot of
medium-sized expenses, the sort of costs – not
eye-watering but worse than a poke in the eye- that fall due perhaps biennially, regularly but
not frequently, and not usually in the same
three or four-week period: new lenses for my
specs; a long overdue service for the family
bicycle fleet; new tyres for the Mini; the cats’
delayed check-up at the vets; various insurance
premiums; a looming dishwasher issue that has
Algis the dishwasher guy shaking his head in
lugubrious Lithuanian fashion.
Then the lock on the back door broke.
A new barrel (I’m learning the lingo) was
needed, plus fully ten copies of the new key,
an indication of the number of people who
require regular access. In fact, if you’re a
tradesman in east London without a key to
our house, you’ve every right to feel left out.
Sometimes, I come home and I feel like
Lord Crawley in one of those long panning
shots in Downton Abbey, the ones where the
household is making ready for a big social
occasion, lots of chambermaids carrying vases
of flowers, footmen struggling with tables,
Carson polishing the silverware and decanting
the claret, gardeners tending the flowerbeds,
Mrs Patmore cooking up a storm in the
basement, everyone swept up in the
excitement of a vast joint enterprise.
In I come, Lord Crampton home from
town, smiling benignly and greeting Svitlana
the cleaner, Rob the roofer, Aidan the plumber,
Algis, Lee the locksmith, Marek the joiner,
Seba the painter, Del the other joiner, the
electrician, also called Lee, and maybe Phil
the builder has dropped by for a cup of tea
too, everyone bustling about, busy busy busy,
Nicola supervising the whole show, Sammy
making endless cups of coffee.
And I go into my little room and have a
little panic. “I just don’t,” I say to myself, “earn
enough money to employ all these people.” n
[email protected]‘My house is like
Downton Abbey.
I’m Lord Crampton
with loads of staff
I can’t afford’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2021. Published and licensed by Times Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed by Prinovis UK Ltd, Liverpool. Not to be sold separately.TOM JACKSON
*