These warm summer evenings I’ve taken to sitting out in the back garden, talking nonsense with my pals. My friend John, for instance. He’s a self-employed photographer, a one-man operation. And yet, he tells me, to pass the time, to keep himself amused, and also for the company, he likes to pretend he has an imaginary workforce, 20 or 30 people, the sort of numbers that might service a medium-sized high-tech enterprise. A non-existent medium-sized high-tech enterprise.

Key employees include “Marjorie”, head of John’s publishing division; “Keith”, IT supremo; “Julie”, the fanciable office junior, and “Bernard”, who doubles up as both accountant and lawyer, ready to fire off a writ if a copyright is breached, an invoice left unpaid. John says when he’s at full strength, his back-bedroom-slash-office can get quite crowded.

Like a contemporary white-collar version of Shirley Valentine talking to her kitchen wall, John sits there amid the filing cabinets, computers and assorted kit, entirely alone, saying things like, “Bit of a glitch on Microsoft Outlook, Keith, can you take a look?”; “Any chance of a cuppa, Julie?” and “How are those stock sales coming along, Marjorie?”

“What’s your pretend leadership style with your pretend workforce?” I ask. “Firm but fair,” replies John.

Seed money

If John’s not around, there’s always Steve, my wife’s cousin’s son. Steve is 21, a maths student, just done his finals, lodges with us in return for technological back-up, advice on science homework and being ruthlessly exploited as a free babysitter.

Steve and I like to sit out the back and discuss how we’re going to get rich. We kick around various ideas, one or two sound quite promising, we have another drink and move on to how we’re going to spend all the money. The rollover has grown extra specially large and, after a lot of fidgeting, Steve says he can stand it no longer and is going to Mustafa’s to buy a ticket.

“But, Steve”, I say, “you know about statistics, you’ve had lectures on probability, you’re doing a course on games, risks and decisions, you’re forever writing n-1 and whatnot on bits of paper, plus a lot of squiggles in Greek. Wouldn’t it be a betrayal of your sacred calling as a mathematician, a man of reason and logic, to indulge in this hopeless frivolity? This absurdity? This opium of the people?”

“I don’t know about that,” says Steve, sheepishly, “I just fancy winning eight million quid.”

Grass widowers

Friday night comes the turn of my cousin George. My son Sam is there, too. Not sure what relation Sam is to George; second cousin, once removed? Or maybe first cousin, once removed? There’s a removed in there somewhere. A wine merchant, George has been bullied by me into raiding his personal stash, and we’re stuck into something red from 1996. Not Sam; he’s only 12. OK, he’s had a sip. No more than that, though; this stuff would be £150 a bottle if we were buying it.

There’s a special glow, with the working week done and dusted, 60 hours before the next one starts, two large ones to the good. And there’s an extra-special glow when my wife, George’s wife and Sam’s sister are all inside making the tea, and we’re all out here doing absolutely nothing. Such an ultra-traditional division of labour along gender lines doesn’t happen very often, not in this particular family. A long silence. George, Sam and I simultaneously give vent to sighs of the deepest possible contentment.

Muck spreading

Back in the post-feminist real world of shared responsibility, I’m struck by the extreme unreliability of the dishwasher, surely the fax machine of the white-goods world. Ovens, fridges, microwaves, they have their moments, but by and large, they work. Dishwashers? Anyone’s guess.

I’m not talking about when they jam or flood or make horrible grinding noises like someone’s emptied a sack of gravel in their insides. Nobody’s perfect; household appliances are no exception. And nor do I mean when dishwashers make your tumblers go all milky; life’s too short to fuss about cloudy glassware. I’m more than prepared to meet the thing halfway.

But when you load it up, switch on and go to bed, and next morning all the stuff is still dirty or — worse — half of it is still dirty, only now it’s spot-welded thermo-baked dirty, just because one spoon has jammed the twirly rotational spinny thing, or a salad bowl in the bottom tray has effectively waterproofed the top tray, or just because the dishwasher didn’t fancy it on this occasion, that’s infuriating.

There just doesn’t seem to be any margin for error with dishwashers. One tiny mistake and you’re done for. Or maybe it’s just the particular model we’ve got. I must remember to ask the lads next time we’re out back, see what they think.

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