Help. It’s Her Indoors’ Birthday and I’m Missing One Pipe

Today is my wife’s birthday. I can’t tell you how old she is because, although I may not have much of a sex life, I’d prefer the tackle to be still in place on the offchance that the opportunity presents itself.

If you’re wondering why there is a picture of a tumble dryer on our landing, have patience. I will get there.

I never know what to buy for her for birthdays. She never used the Bosch hammer drill I bought two years ago, and the new spark plugs for the car didn’t go down well the year before that. So this year I asked what she wanted.

First it was a new cross and chain. She’s more religious than me. She must be. She’s always saying, “How in the name of Almighty God did I end up married to you?”

The old chain broke and the cross disappeared somewhere in Benidorm. I complained, of course. “That was £3.99 well spent,” I said. But she insisted on a new one. Sadly, Woolworths as a High Street emporium, is long gone. It eventually cost me just under a ton, and again I complained. I have plenty of bits of wood to make a cross from and I could have got a yard of chain from B+Q for less than a fiver, but no, it had to be gold not mild steel.

Still this was not enough. She’s been whining that she struggles to dry the washing. I can take a hint. So as a surprise birthday present, I bought her a new clothes line and prop. It didn’t go down well… actually, it did. When the line snapped, the prop fell down and brought the washing with it.

Eventually, she pulled one of the dirtiest, most underhand tricks known to man. “I’m going to save you a hundred and fifty pounds,” she told me, and pointed out a tumble dryer online, priced at £110.

“How’s that saving me one and half?” I asked.

With a couple of deft clicks of the mouse, she landed on another tumble dryer, but this was £268. “That’s the one I really want,” she told me.

Now do you see why the picture is there?

At this point, I’m another £110 out of pocket and the bloke has just delivered it. Free delivery, the website said, but that was to the ground floor. It’s just cost me a fiver to get them to take it upstairs.

It’s one of those where you have to stick the pipe out of the window to take the steam away. Not that Her Indoors will admit to being a cheapskate (or married to an even cheaper skate). She’s going to tell the neighbours we’ve turned the spare room into a sauna.

Imagine my irritation, then, when we unpacked it and found there was no pipe. Only a dark tunnel where one was to be fitted. I’m sure James Bond had to crawl down something like this in Dr No.

Straight on the phone, I asked, “Where’s my fucking pipe?”

The answer was a bit snappy. “If you read the description online you’ll see that the fucking pipe is extra and you didn’t fucking order it.”

“How much?” I demanded, ignoring the invective.

“A tenner and since it’s coming separately, there’ll be another fiver for delivery.”

I told them they could stick the pipe up their pipe and ordered it from somewhere else for six notes, plus two quid delivery. It’ll be here by Wednesday.

By now, I’m trying to recover from life-threatening credit card surgery, and she’s playing with the new toy, creating clouds of steam in the spare room.

“All I really need now,” she said coming downstairs and wiping the condensed water from her glasses, “are some new clothes to test it on.”

I was busy looking for the cyanide when she advised me to look on the bright side. “When you change your underpants, they’ll be washed, dried and ironed in less than two hours.”

Which is fine, but what do I do with the pipe-less tumble dryer between Christmases?