My life of non-stop glamour and sizzle continues. Over breakfast in our Notting Hill ‘country kitchen’ I noticed the large cardboard box lying out by the bins. This is not unusual. Since Covid/WFH, deliveries are more frequent than drone strikes in the Donbas.
‘Bound to be for you,’ said Ivo. ‘Actually, could be your birthday present.’ He went back to his study of the Times.
You may think this is an unorthodox way of presenting your wife with her birthday present. But there is nobody to blame but me, according to my husband, who declares I’m ‘terrible at presents’.
My birthday – not that anybody cares – is on 3 September, at the height of la rentrée. My mother would therefore cleverly disguise things I needed for school as objects of desire. I still remember, aged nine in Brussels, unwrapping with excitement a red, fleecy dressing gown (an item on the lengthy uniform list for Ashdown House) the day before I was posted off to prep school in a different country. My other present was a bottle of Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass hand lotion. I kept it in my bedside locker. I’d squeeze out a dribble when homesick as the scent reassured me that my mother was out there somewhere and we would meet again.
As for Ivo saying I’m terrible at presents, he would, wouldn’t he, as he comes from noble Norman stock on both sides. The Dawnays are faerie creatures of romance and refinement who believe that presents should never, ever be practical.
Meeting his sister, the distinguished literary agent Caroline Dawnay, for the first time, I entered her first-floor drawing room, which was hung with wonderful pictures and paintings and cluttered with collectables. ‘Oh! Why do you have a picture of my Aunt Sarah?’ I asked, for there on the wall was a framed drawing of my mother’s sister as a girl by Henry Lamb (1883-1960). When we got married, Caroline gave it to us as a wedding present. There’s also a Lamb portrait of my mother as a baby, and now the Lamb drawings of the Fawcett sisters hang on either side of the bed and make me happy every day.
See what I mean about the Dawnays understanding presents, and me not so much? For our 20th wedding anniversary I asked for a new dishwasher.
Back to my recent birthday. I’d requested a pressure washer, adding a rider, in tones that no husband would care for: ‘And don’t do your usual thing of buying the cheapest one you can find that always breaks. Remember you get what you pay for!’ And then I administered the clincher: ‘Remember the chainsaw!’
When the box appeared by the bins, I’d almost forgotten my request, even though I’ve wanted a pressure washer – who hasn’t? – since we (well, he) bought the house in 1992. It would be used to jet-clean the York stone patio, and it had finally arrived. A Bosch Easy Aquatak 120!
It only took all morning to attach the spray pistol to the trigger, plug in the hose, and work out which attachment did what. There was also a round thing with bristles which I couldn’t attach as it kept popping off. This round thing was the patio cleaner but every time I switched the machine on, things (literally) fell apart. I couldn’t create a seal and the blasted thing continued to pop off. After watching YouTube videos for an hour, I realised that Houston, we had a problem. The reason it kept popping off was because I couldn’t screw or unscrew the red plastic sleeve to seal the join to the trigger.
For my birthday, I requested a pressure washer, adding: ‘Don’t do your usual thing of buying the cheapest one’
‘It doesn’t work,’ I complained. It was giving chainsaw vibes. ‘It’s already broken!’
In desperation I rang the Bosch customer service helpline. They told me I needed the helpline for garden tools, not white goods. I called that helpline and a nice lady said I had to send an email, making sure I had the Easy Aquatak’s proof of purchase, product code and serial number. I did this. We exchanged emails for days. Bosch kept saying ‘sometimes new components can be a bit stiff’ and to try harder, maybe with some washing up liquid as a lubricant. If that failed, I had to complete other forms and ‘return the product for an inspection’.
Anyway, on Saturday, I was in our communal garden for sports day, preparing Ziggy for the dog race which she won for the third year on the bounce, pipping the Osbornes’ red fox lab, Albi, to the trophy. Ivo suddenly appeared in the communal garden like a deus ex machina, holding the patio cleaner aloft. He marched up to our burly Australian neighbour with the whippet. ‘I need a big strong man,’ he announced. The Aussie untwisted the red sleeve, and it turned out Bosch was right all along.
Never mind that. The pressure washer is in theory working perfectly, but I can’t say for certain, or use it, as there’s a hosepipe ban. What I can tell you is that after Ivo put a picture of me with the Aquatak on his Instagram captioned ‘the old scrubber’ (since deleted), it’s a week in Venice next year.
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