"We should rent our house out to pay for our holiday"

A bright idea, Feb 24: In bed, ten past midnight, my husband says, “We should rent our house out to pay for our holiday.”

“Never again,” I respond, “nunnight.”

“Six hundred quid a week — it’s a no-brainer,” he says, all entrepeneurial excitement and glee.

“Nunnight Richard Branson.”

Bright idea status update, April 24, at the kitchen table:

“Now that we’ve let the house,” I say, “I’d like you to understand that this time, getting the house ready is going to be a shared experience.”

“Absolutely,” he says. “Teamwork. I’m totally on board. Even-stevens, fair and square.”

“We’ll make a list together,” I say. “Your jobs down one side and mine down the other.”

“You make the list,” he says, “I’ll just work off it.”

“Teamwork,” I say, “I’ll find a pen, you find paper.”

Status update, June 13. World Cup. Spain vs Netherlands:

“When I said ‘shared experience,’ I say, wearing my old blue boilersuit, sweat, and anti-fungal bathroom sealant, “I meant shared between you and me. Not you, me and the World Cup.”

“I’m totally on board,” he says from the edge of the sofa.

“Can you say that again, while making eye-contact with me?”

“Five-one,” he exclaims, “well that’s the end of Spain and their tippy-tappy football.”

“Can you say that again, with eye-contact?” I repeat.

He stares at me as if I am having a worrying lapse of some kind.

“Five-one?” he proffers tentatively, his face a perplexed question-mark, “well that’s the end of Spain and their tippy-tappy football?”

Status update, June 19. England vs Uruguay:

“On the holiday-lettings website,” I say, wearing boiler-suit, sweat, shears, hedge-foliage, crown of thorns and blood, “you said, ‘beautiful sea-view,’ which means the front hedge has to be cut down by six feet. Thirty foot length of privet, fuschia and brambles; I’ve done 10 feet.”

“At least this time it was over quickly for England,” he says, from the sofa’s edge. “Normally they just limp, limp, limp along and then there’s an inevitable, miserable collapse.”

“My back is f****d,” I say, limping upstairs. “Twenty feet of hedge — that will take you two full days. Just warning you,” I say.

“Relax,” he shouts, just before I reach the bed and experience inevitable, miserable collapse, “if the worst comes to the worst, they can look at the sea from the upstairs bathroom window.”

Status update, July 8. Germany vs Brazil, seven goals to one:

“I just can’t believe what I’m seeing,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

I regard him on the sofa, where he sits, all in a soccer-jitter.

“Quite frankly,” I say, wearing boiler suit, sweat and Antique White vinyl-silk emulsion, “neither can I.

“On the website,” I continue, “you put ‘fully modernised farmhouse’. What are you going to do about the kitchen counter top that’s rotting old wood into the Belfast sink?”

“I’m totally on top of it,” he says, “bought all the wood this morning and fixed my jig-saw.”

Status update, July 13, Argentina vs Germany; World Cup final:

I walk through the sitting room, wearing knickers, bra, dust, grime, and tile-grout. “What have you got all over you?” he asks.

“I’m re-grouting the shower,” I say. “We’re leaving on 26th. That means we have 16 days until tenants arrive — and it’s been advertised as a ‘charming farmhouse,’ not ‘squat’.” I shoot past him; I’m far too busy to observe our mutually agreed guiding principle for longevity: it’s better to have five little explosions a day than one really, really big one, when it’s too late.

Status update, July 17. 1!0am. Yesterday, having lifted up the old blue bathroom lino, levered 131 flat-topped nails from the hardboard underneath- with chisel, hammer, brute force, tears and a cricked neck, I’m now scraping hardboard remains from the floorboards, with same.

My husband arrives in the doorway wanting to know if I’ve seen his cycling shoes. The ones with cleats. He’s going for a spin on the bike, he says, so he’ll fit the kitchen counter-top tonight.

Status update July 21.

Five days to go and I’m down to my last seven jobs. While my husband is at the gym, I paint the bathroom floorboards raspberry, re-line the kitchen drawers, mow the front garden, scrub the bathroom tiles with bleach and an old toothbrush, cut back vindictive climbing rose, sort out bed-linen. Then I have five little explosions and book myself a single flight — to my sister’s flat in London, three days earlier than planned — to stop a really, really big one coming.