Surely, if I just check once more behind the cabbage, a final beer will suddenly appear?

Jocasta has noted this behaviour and thinks less of me for it. I already live with a contemptuous woman. I’m unsure whether I also want to live with a contemptuous fridge. I go for the simplest model. They deliver it two days later.

Just when the new fridge arrives, the oven decides to stop working: it seems that the appliances are involved in some sort of tag-team relay. The oven, mind you, has never really worked, which may be why we’ve spent the last fifteen years living on a diet of unrelieved bolognaise sauce. Now it’s given up all signs of life. Frankly, I’m glad the mongrel is dead. I remove more money from the bank account and pay a visit to Mr Hardly Normal. I buy the oven with the biggest discount sticker—an insanely complex wall unit, featuring twenty-three different combinations of bottom element, top element, fans and grills. I try to get Jocasta on the phone to discuss the choice, but she’s in a meeting. I buy it anyway, without consultation. I should be awarded an Australian Bravery Medal.

As it happens, Jocasta quite likes the oven, largely on the basis that, after fifteen years of the other one, it has the advantage of getting hot. For us, this is a remarkably novel feature in an oven.

The remaining appliances sense the happy mood. We have a new fridge, purring away, and an oven capable of getting hot. There is still money in the bank: around fifty cents, if you must ask. Jocasta even has her arm around me, and is suggesting we open a delightful bottle of white wine—as chilled by our new fridge.

The appliances panic. Their plan is in pieces. That night, the VCR eats three tapes, spitting the chewed remains venomously onto the carpet. The air is rent with the screams of the dryer, writhing like a dying wildebeest. I glance up and spot the toaster watching us, malevolently. It’s then the appliances bring in the big guns. The computer seizes up.

The next morning, I ring the local computer store and arrange a home visit from one of the young technicians. I’ve never met him before but he has the same manner as every computer help guy I have ever met. Whether at home or work, they always walk in with the calm, avuncular manner of a senior surgeon. ‘Let’s see what’s going wrong here,’ they say with a patronising smile, as if you’re a bit dim and have probably forgotten to turn the thing on at the power point. Three hours later they are still sitting there. There’s some strange problem, they explain, which they are unable to identify. It’s never happened before. Usually this is a ten-minute job.