A GREAT and terrible truth has finally dribbled through to my consciousness. It only took 40 years. The house is never going to be finished. None of the houses I’ve ever owned were ever finished. I’m going to be finished before they are. Even the fence will outlast me. I’ve just finished it. My wife said: “That’ll see us out.” Great God, I am more expendable than a fence! I blame myself. I could have built it of old bedsteads and baling twine, like farmers do, but I built it with treated timber and galvanised screws. It will need renovating when I’m 138 years old. Why do we do this?…

WE are drinking milk again. It’s been eight years. Eight years spent on soy milk, but now it’s over. It started when our daughters saw The Light. “Milk’s bad for you,” they chanted. “Fat, cholesterol, exploitation of cows.” And they poured it down the sink. I remember it was a Sunday afternoon. They’d been to an environmental group hug the previous day and had spent Sunday morning sleeping it off. All that soy milk, I guess. An environmental group hug is like tree-hugging, but with people. Your true environmentalist doesn’t shake hands or give people high fives. He (and she) hugs you. This is to show he embraces everyone as…

MY daughter wants to know how to tell if she’s fallen in love. She’s 24. She never asked when she was 16, nor 20, nor even 23. I think that was because she reckoned she knew. Now she’s not so sure, so I’m flattered she’s asked me. Unfortunately, I said, I only know how to tell when you’ve fallen out of love, and even that’s complicated. For instance, if you want to poison their soup you might still be in love. But if you actually do poison their soup — and especially if you let them drink it, you’re probably not. It’s not love if you don’t like their name.…

I HAVE solved the problem of keeping knives sharp. I’ve bought new ones. They’ll go blunt, of course, and I’ll have to buy a new set of kitchen knives at least once a month, but it will save a lot of energy. You have no idea how long it takes to beat a tomato to death with a blunt knife. And don’t tell me I should buy a sharpener and use it. I have a sharpener; and I do use it. Remember how they used to say that if you placed your razor blades inside a pyramid they grew sharper? Our house works in reverse. Place a blade in our…

The decorations have gone limp. So have I. It was bound to happen. Like them, I have been jolly for too long. Like them, I am no longer twinkling in the glow of the fairy lights on the Christmas tree. I’m even wearing the party hat out of cracker. It worked on Christmas Day. Why not now? There was a time when I could keep the pace going from Christmas Eve until about 4am on the morning of January 1, at which point I would fall into a catatonic state until February. Now the best I can manage is the day after Boxing Day. Another reminder — like hairy ears…