The Couple Who Swore They'd Never Move To The Country

  A passer by knocked at our door earlier this week; I was about to embark on a “welcome, weary traveller, please warm yourself in front of the fire” routine to convince him we were genuine country folk, but he wasn’t stopping. He wanted to let us know that he ran a construction company and that our scaffolding was unsafe. He painted various lurid pictures of what might happen if a passing lorry struck it a glancing blow. I reassured him that it was being taken down that very day. I’m not sure why I was feeling so confident about this. This was, after all, the third day on which it was due to be cleared. On the first day two horny-handed sons of toil had arrived and said they could only take half of it because it wouldn’t all fit on the van. The following day someone else turned up with a slightly smaller van and said he could only take half of what was left. I envisage a day four weeks in the future, when the solitary remaining pole is cut in half so it’ll fit in a Fiat 500. The scaff

  The number of workmen at our house at any one time has dwindled to a couple of grizzled blokes on scaffolding (the bathroom isn’t finished, but the installers seem to have given up and disappeared, leaving a handy bath on the landing) so my week’s quota of frustrating conversations has had to come from utility companies, with Plusnet providing a particular collector’s item: “Hi, I’m confused why you’re charging me this £100 penalty.” “You cancelled your contract.” “Yes, but I had already started a new contract for the house I was moving to, so that’s technically me staying with you.” “You cancelled the contract, so we’ve issued a penalty charge” “But don’t you see I have another contract with you?” “Yes, but you didn’t follow the house move policy.” “OK, but if you take the spirit of the policy–“ “I’ll ask you not to get aggressive. You didn’t follow the policy, so we’re charging a penalty.” “I want to escalate this. I want to speak to someone who can override the policy, now.” “That