When Chris said the words, “You do desperate better than me!”, I knew he was right and I accepted the phone from his outstretched hand; I may not have as many hormones as I used to but I still have enough to cause the floodgates to open when necessary. And yet, as I held the phone and dialled the number for Dave the plumber, I felt more mad than desperate, after all, only yesterday we had forked out £250 for a boiler part and two hours work – Dave the plumber charges £48 per hour and adds as much as he wants onto the price of parts, however, he is more experienced at boiler problems than Sam the plumber (our first choice at £15 per hour plus parts at cost, and not to be confused with Speedboat Sam the plumber and diver who deprived us of £200 of our hard earned money for forty minutes work, after which the boiler was in worse condition than before he started).

Honest-faced Dave had promised us that he wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan plumber, nor a deep sea diver; he was back, living in Dawlish, and trying to make a name for himself; the part wouldn’t cost much and he would work as quickly as possible. Admittedly he had worked longer than Speedboat Sam but the outcome was not dissimilar – only worse still – every turn of the hot tap caused an explosion, and the sound like a foghorn went on for even longer than previously.

“I’ll come back and fix that as soon as I can,” Dave said as he was leaving, “It won’t cost much.”

So, understandably, this morning I was pretty mad when Dave informed Chris that the new part would cost £230 (plus his time at £48 per hour).

“Well done!” said Chris after I had put down the phone, “I knew from the moment you opened your mouth that you could make him bring the job in under one hundred pounds.”

“Oh? What did I say?”

“Well, you didn’t let him speak. You went straight in for the jugular…”

“Really? Go on, tell me – I can’t remember.”

“You asked, ‘Is that Dave?’ and he must have said ‘Yes’, then you said, ‘I’m very upset!'”

As much as I would like to say that I didn’t see his point, I can’t lie – I could see exactly what he meant. Dave has recently had a divorce. I suspect he’s had quite enough of women getting “very upset”.