My wife texts me a picture of a package, addressed to me, on our kitchen table. “You’re a busy shopping bee,” she writes. The implication is that I am profligate, but actually I’m just confused.
“I have no idea what that is,” I write back.
“It’s heavy,” my wife writes. I think about this for several minutes.
“It might be my hinge!” I write back. There is no reply.
I do not think of myself as profligate, although it is certainly the most expensive hinge I’ve ever purchased – almost £15. It is part of my ongoing quest to repair the back door, which began six months ago after an encounter with a man I know only as John Building Service.
John Building Service – for that is what it said on the side of his van – came to fix our front garden wall after somebody drove into it.
It’s the kind of skilled work I really enjoy watching, but I struggled to find a suitable observation post.
“What are you doing?” said the middle one from his bed one morning.
“Peering through your curtains at a man building a wall,” I said. “Come and look.”
“I was asleep!” he shouted.
“He really knows what he’s doing,” I said. “Building is his middle name.”
I was alone in the kitchen the next day when John Building Service came round to the back to say the wall was finished, smiling at me through the glass.
I shooed him away from the door before grabbing the handle and throwing my shoulder against the wood heavily. On the third go the door burst open with an unpleasant crack.
“It sticks,” I said.
John Building Service stepped in and cast his expert eye over the frame. For a hopeful moment I thought he might fix the door for me, in exchange for whatever cash I happened to be holding, simply because his desire for precision in all things demanded it. Instead he pointed to the top hinge with his pencil.
“You need to maybe replace those screws with longer ones,” he said.
“I do?” I said.
“So they will have more bite,” he said.
Three months later I finally got round to removing one of the screws so I could take it to B&Q in search of a slightly longer version. When I got home I replaced all six hinge screws, and then spent half an hour opening and closing the door in mounting frustration.
“What are you doing?” my wife asked.
“Following the instructions of John Building Service,” I said. “But if anything, this door is now even more out of alignment.”
“So you’ve made it worse,” she said.
“Don’t blame me,” I said. “Blame the hinge.” I stood on a chair to note down its model number.
Two weeks later I open the package containing my new hinge, and I am immediately deflated: it comes with a 25-year guarantee. This leads me to believe my assessment of the original hinge as faulty is probably wrong. These hinges don’t just pack up, I think. Not at £15 each. My wife comes in with her coat on.
“Where are you going?” I say.
“To walk the dog,” she says.
“Which park?” I say.
“Why do you need to know?” she says.
“Because I might come with you,” I say. She stares at me for a long time.
“What?” she says.
“I thought we could go together,” I say.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
The park is bright and cold. My wife shoulders me rightward when I try to take the path to the left.
“You come on my walk, you go my way,” she says. The dog runs up ahead.
“It’s like, how could a hinge spread?” I say. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t go that way any more,” my wife says. “I got tired of it.”
“But the gap between the door and the frame is definitely wider at the top,” I say. “Significantly wider.”
“And to think I was worried that you weren’t going to talk,” my wife says.
A cold wind finds its way inside my coat collar, and I think about what I would pay for just one piece of follow-up advice worthy of the name Building Service.
