CGF’s toilet cistern keeps running into the bowl for a while after it is flushed so I started by having a look at that. There are various pieces of advice on tinternet, most of which involve taking bits apart. Well, I couldn’t see how most of the bits came apart – not without using so much force that there was risk of breaking them. After poking and hitting things I discovered, much to my bemusement as the two processes are not directly connected, that the water only leaked while the tank was filling. If I lifted the float to shut of the valve, the water stopped flowing into the bowl. I returned to tintnernet and found a much easier piece of advice. “Turn the water pressure down”. I tried it and it seemed to work. Not yet had any reports as to whether it was still working.

Only downside was that as there is no isolation valve for the cistern I had to turn down the pressure for the whole house – but hopefully not too far to be a problem. A previous owner refitted the bathroom, and went to a lot of trouble to plumb in the toilet. You would think that, considering the minimal extra cost in both money and effort, he/she would have fitted an isolation valve. Muppet.

Overheard snippets of conversation that amused me # 1: “But mummy, I want to keep choosing until I pick something you say I can have”

I’d also noticed that the cistern on the downstairs loo takes forever to fill, so I had a look at that too. Not sure whether I fixed it – in fact, on my first attempt I stopped the valve shutting off so the tank overflowed, but I soon fixed that. However, I later had a hunch as to what the problem might be, so will look at that when I remember.

This cistern did have an isolation valve.

I also fitted a letterbox in the door. The outside flap had broken, and seeing as flaps were pretty much the same price as the whole caboodle (inside and outside flap, and sleeve in between), and a flap on its own probably wouldn’t fit, I bought the whole caboodle.

Letterboxes aren’t easy to fit, on account of the need to be on both the inside-side and the outside-side of the door at the same time. Plus the need for another hand to hold the flap out of the way while you fit the screws. Another example of the deficiency in evolution in giving us only one pair of hands.

Michael Gove, the sometime much-despised Education Secretary, started a parliamentary answer by commenting that the questioner had “gone to the same school as me”. I’d have thought that someone who banged on so much about standards in schools would have a better grasp of the English language. You are not a school, Michael, which makes your phrase an invalid comparison. What you should have said is “went to the same school that I did”.

Overheard snippets of conversation that amused me # 2: “Saying ‘please’ still isn’t going to make me buy you a fluffy carrot”

Later we went to Ikea – and I bought something. I’ve never bought furniture from Ikea before – I’ll add it to my list of eleven and three-quarter things to do before I am 50. My chest of drawers has fallen apart so I need a replacement.

I don't know whether you’ve ever been to Ikea, but you wander through the showrooms, make a note of what you want, the pick it up from the warehouse. But here’s the really important bit: when you’ve made a note of what you want, don’t lose that piece of paper, otherwise you don’t know which part of the warehouse to go to. Though it wasn’t a bad as it could have been - I could remember the aisle number, so we just walked along that until we found the right pieces. I pulled out the heavy box to put straight onto the trolley – only to find that CGF Sprog 3 had taken the trolley down to the far end of the aisle!