Just before midday I open the door to the youngest one’s bedroom and peer into the gloom. “Wake up!” I shout. “It’s haircut day!” “Jesus Christ!” he shouts. “Kelly and Hayley are already here,” I say. “Mum’s highlights are under way.”
“Leave me alone,” he says.
“I’ve had my hair cut, and your brother is in the chair,” I say. “You’re next.”
“Fine,” he says.
“All the talk is of Kelly’s broken sewage pipe, but other topics will be covered.”
“Go away,” he says.
I go back downstairs with a half-finished shopping list.
“The council’s saying there’s nothing they can do,” says Kelly, running clippers up the middle one’s neck.
“She’s too nice, is what it is,” says Hayley, indicating Kelly with the pointed handle of her colouring brush.
“What else goes on this list?” I ask.
“Supper,” my wife says.
By the time I return from the shops, everyone is shorn and lunch has begun. I have no plans for the afternoon beyond finding a sunny spot where I can sit and worry.
“There’s something wrong with this dishwasher,” my wife says. “This bit is just hanging off.”
I crouch down and peer in. The bit she is referring to is the spray arm. I push it back into place a few times, to no avail.
“There’s nothing to attach it to,” I say. “There must be a piece missing.”
My wife begins to pull dirty dishes from the top rack, and I have a sense of my afternoon evaporating. Once it’s fully emptied, I crawl into the dishwasher until the available light is blocked by my frame. The problem is unchanged: there is simply no mechanism for fixing the arm in place.
“I give up,” I say, standing up and stomping across the garden to my office. I haven’t actually given up; I just want to consult the internet. I discover the part in question is the middle spray arm, implying the existence of an upper spray arm I never knew about. I am otherwise unenlightened.
Half an hour later I hear someone keening in frustration. It sounds like me.
“Dad!” the voice shouts.
I return to the kitchen to find the middle one on the floor in front of the dishwasher. In my absence he has been charged with replacing the racks and dishes.
“I don’t know how to do this!” he says.
“Look,” I say, kneeling. “Line the wheels up on the tracks, and then lift.” As we slide the upper rack into place, a little protrusion at the back engages with a slot in the spray arm, and my world turns upside down.
“Wait,” I say. “What if… ?” I stare at the boy open-mouthed.
“What?” he says, looking at me warily, as if I might be having a stroke.
“What if the spray arm attaches to the rack, rather than the dishwasher?” I push the head of the spray arm into a corresponding gap in the rack, and hear a satisfying click.
An hour later my wife walks into the kitchen carrying a collection of mugs retrieved from various bedrooms. I’m frozen in contemplation, pestle in one hand, mortar in the other.
“Busy?” she says, opening the dishwasher.
“I’m trying to increase amounts by a third in my head,” I say.
“Wait, did you fix this thing?” she says.
“Oh yes,” I say.
“Fantastic,” she says.
“The spray arm attaches to the rack, not the dishwasher,” I say.
“Do I need to hear this part?” she says.
“It’s changed my perspective on a lot of things,” I say. “Did you know about the upper spray arm?”
“There’s something wrong with this door,” she says. I see that she is struggling to unlock one of the back double doors.
After some tinkering I manage to force the top bolt down with a screwdriver, creating a new problem.
“Now it won’t close,” I say.
“Leave it then,” my wife says.
“Won’t close is worse than won’t open,” I say. “I need a ladder.”
Two hours later I am still up the ladder, keening and swearing while our dinner guests look on.
