“Are you coming home from work soon?”

“Yes…” I waited for a supplementary question, “Did you want something?”

“No, I’ll see you soon then.”

I arrived to find a labrador greeting me, which is not unusual, except that we have a brown one and a black one and now here was a blonde one too.

“This is Olsen. Isn’t he lovely? I’ve rescued him.”

Indeed she had rescued him from certain death at the pound…  in a hire car which we had while ours was being repaired post accident…  in a hire car which was due back early in the morning; a hire car with black cloth seats which now looked like a Yeti had rolled in the back.

So off I went to vacuum the car. We can’t get our car off the street as we have a driveway which might once have accommodated Clydesdales but certainly not a car. So time to get the extension cord and take the vacuum out into our busy road and clean the car.

Of course, the lock on the front security grill door had chosen this as the perfect time to jam completely. Therefore out the front window went I with the vacuum cleaner. Were I Sally Pearson, the Olympic hurdler, this might have been simple but, as I am not, parts of me may never articulate quite the same way again.

So on to vacuuming the car to the amusement of traffic driving by… simple.