Technology

A rattling noise woke me in the dead of night and I fumbled my way into the dark corridor. It was coming from the room at the end of the hallway, which was occupied by a couple from West Virginia on a romantic road trip. The door rattled again as I stood there. I realised the big old key was turning and returning in the lock and the handle was rattling but the door was not opening. I ran back into our bedroom and shook the builder boyfriend awake. ‘The people in room 4 are stuck in their room!’ He stirred and when I wouldn’t stop shaking him he got

Bolting down the back hallway, I realised I was running away from the guests. I shut the door marked private and collapsed on to the dirty old dog sofa in the boot room. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve done,’ I texted the builder boyfriend who was in London. ‘Left the yard hose on,’ he texted back, for I often risk emptying the well when I’m on my own by forgetting to turn off the stable yard tap after topping up the horses’ water at night. ‘No. Worse. The French people arrived and I hadn’t heated the water. You’ve got to get it on a timer,’ I said, attempting to blame

I once heard of a couple who were teachers in their mid-fifties. Having pooled the proceeds from selling both their flats when they moved in together in the 1990s, they found themselves in the happy position of owning a mortgage-free west London house worth more than £1 million. He was originally from Norfolk, and was eager to move back to a larger and prettier country home costing half the price. They could then bank £500,000 in tax-free profits, retire early and travel the world. She, however, was a lifelong Londoner who refused to leave London. Not knowing all the facts, I cannot say who was right. But it might help

Hypochondriacs are never happy because we know that eventually all of us are vindicated. As Spike Milligan said on his gravestone: ‘I told you I was ill.’ In fact, he had it engraved in Irish: ‘Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.’ Another one was Alan Clark, who for years listed symptoms – including the merest twinge – in his diaries, along with sentiments to the effect that he knew something would turn out to be serious one day and eventually, at a fairly respectable age to get to, it did. These people are my heroes. They know of what they speak. ‘It’s a two-tone mole!’ I screamed, as I

After running all the errands I could to help my parents, a letter from West Midlands Police arrived. They were throwing the book at us because I’d been caught doing 40mph in a 30 in my parents’ car. The photo evidence showed their little silver Peugeot being driven by me on a dual carriageway in Coventry. A dual carriageway. In what world would anyone think they should be driving slower than 40 on a dual carriageway? I was bringing the car back from its MOT, having been asked to please sort this out by my father as one of a mountain of things he had let pile up since becoming

This column nearly didn’t happen. Just as I sat down to write, disaster! My dishwasher lost its connection to the internet. This meant I could no longer view real-time feedback about its water consumption on the app. Nor could I start my dishwasher remotely from my office, timing it perfectly so it would be ending the drying cycle when I got home. This facility is, of course, almost entirely pointless. I use it all the time. Thus I was nearly resigned to cancelling this column in order to spend the next six hours fixing the problem. Fortunately, resetting the router fixed the glitch straight away, which is why you are