Seán Moncrieff: How easily we can forget how well we have it

After a lot of begging texts, we finally convinced a tiler to come to the house to do a job in the kitchen that we’d been meaning to have done for the previous two years.

It only took a day, but it left us with bits of plaster on the tiles that had to be cleaned off, electrical sockets hanging out of walls because we needed to get long screws to put them back in, and a film of a dust that covered everything in the kitchen: which inevitably reappeared as dust footprints in every other part of the house.

Daughter Number One and the boyfriend are back from London now, still looking for a place to live. They like the kitchen a lot, mostly because they eat 10 meals a day. In between meals they change their outfits. In the middle of the night, when it’s quiet, Herself swears she can hear the washing machine gently weeping.

Their lives had been destroyed; their imagined futures erased. Yet they weren't irritable. Instead, they opted to cling to the thinnest of hope

There was only time to attack the dust problem. I said I’d sort out the lumps of plaster and the sockets at the weekend: which was a rash promise. Because I’d already made a rash promise the week before. I’d agreed to be a judge on the radio bit of the student media awards and then promptly forgotten all about it.

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I’d assumed it wouldn’t take up too much time. Herself is a judge on the grown-up radio awards and she seemed to manage just fine. But Herself can tell you what she’s going to be doing on August 23rd, 2027. I’m not sure what sentence I’m going to write next.

Well, it’s this one: I’d only started to realise that it involved listening to hours of audio and the deadline was looming fast. But I’d sort that at the weekend too. Along with several other things.

This was Saturday morning: get up, listen to audio. Get dressed, bring Daughter Number One and the boyfriend to an apartment viewing. On the way, gently suggest to the boyfriend that he take out his nose ring. Suck up to the prospective landlord, then head home, filled with hope and despair.

Back in the house, I scraped all the bits of plaster from the new tiles, then went back to listening to audio: before Herself reminded me that I’d also committed to mowing the lawn.

I made a Face.

You promised, she said.

Sighing, I headed out to the garden, and was just finishing that job when Herself brought Daughter Number Four to her swimming lesson. Daughter Number One and the boyfriend had already changed outfits and gone out, so I used that time alone to turn off the power and change the electrical sockets.

But it was a fiddley task and took longer than I thought. When Herself returned, the electric gate at the back of the house wouldn’t work so she had to phone me to get in. And when she realised I’d cut off the power while the washing machine was in mid-cycle, she was less than pleased.

Things were a bit tense. We both got a bit snappy.

Huffily, I went back to listening to audio, then remembered yet another thing I’d put off for the weekend: buying Easter eggs. Herself glared at me for leaving it so late.

But when I’d returned from scavenging through the ravaged shops' aisles, we’d both calmed down. Herself had had a ton of tasks to do that day as well, and it had made us both stressed and ratty. Yet, none of those things were life-changing or perilous. Just a long list of humdrum jobs.

Earlier in the week, I’d interviewed two Ukrainian refugees. Their lives had been destroyed; their imagined futures erased. Yet they weren’t irritable. Instead, they opted to cling to the thinnest of hope.

They were so distressed, I hugged them afterwards and counselled myself with clichés: count your blessings, don’t sweat the small stuff. How easily we can forget how well we have it.