In spite of all my good intentions to vacuum the stairs, it clearly wasn't going to happen today. Just as I'd finished lugging the hoover up to the landing, the brush head fell off and tumbled all the way to the bottom.

Upon further investigation, it appeared the fixings had snapped and so the head couldn't be re-attached to the hose. Mr Young, who had burst hopefully out of his study upon hearing the clattering noise as it bounced down the stairs (no doubt having first located my life insurance documents), said;

"Oh dear. Broken the hoover now, have we?" shaking his head and looking over the top of his glasses at me as if I had wrenched the wretched thing apart with my bare hands just to get out of one of my most hated jobs. Even when I showed him the pieces of broken plastic, I'm still not sure he believed me.

Anyway, all's well that ends well. I got to spend the afternoon pretending to research vacuum cleaners on the Internet (and in reality checking out shoes on eBay) and the dust on the stair carpet got a 24-hour reprieve. A win-win situation, you might say.

Saturday

We have chosen our new vacuum, and have to collect it from Comet today.

"Let's walk," said Mr Young. "I can carry it home."

"Really?" I said. "Won't it be heavy?"

"No," he said, dismissively. "Anyway, I'll take my Swiss army knife and cut a handle in the cardboard to make it easier to carry." I was very impressed by this. What a resourceful husband I have, I thought, and said so.

"Well, you know..." he said modestly, tapping the side of his forehead. "Got to be prepared."

We collected the vacuum from Comet in its dauntingly large box.

"It is a bit heavier than I thought it was going to be," confessed Mr Young as he heaved it out of the shop. He got out his pocket knife and cut a neat rectangle in the side of the box.

"There you are," he said, slipping his fingers into the make-shift handle and lifting it up. "Works perfectly." He managed thirty paces before the cardboard ripped disastrously and the box fell to the floor. Without a word, he picked it up and staggered past Iceland. We walked home. Mr Young grew breathless and very red in the face. I walked a couple of paces behind, trying (I did! honestly!) not to laugh.

"Can I help?" I asked him several times.

"NO!" he shouted crossly.

"We should have taken the car really, shouldn't we?" I said as we neared home. I could tell by Mr Young's expression that this was an observation he would really rather I hadn't shared with him.

But it was all worth it when we got home and and his face lit up as we took the vacuum out of its disintegrating cardboard box.

"Look at this!" he exclaimed excitedly, rather like a child unpacking their Christmas stocking. "It's got a crevice tool and an upholstery nozzle AND a separate hose just for doing the stairs!"

"Wow!" I said. "Let's start by hoovering up all these little bits of torn cardboard!"

"Oh, ha ha," he said. I think I ruined the moment for him.

Sunday

Sniggering, I told Harriet about Mr Young's box-carrying fiasco.

"I don't think you're really in a position to laugh," she said sternly. "At least he's never set fire to the oven gloves." Good point.