What to do on a lovely sunny day like today? I thought aloud.

“Oh, I know. Let’s have a water fight.” Suggested my 9 year old son.

“You did say we’ll have a water fight on the weekend” added my 6 year old daughter.

So – they’re acting their age, maybe I should act mine. “OK I said. You guys get the water guns and I’ll hook up the hose pipe.”

“Oi, that’s cheating.” Pointed out my wife.

“I’m not going to hose the kids down, I thought since we’ll be playing with water, I’d might as well get the cars cleaned at the same time”

“Hmmm… Good idea” Agreed my wife.

So off we went. Kids having a water fight, my wife weeding the flower bed and pouring water on the kids with the watering can, me washing the car and occasionally splashing the kids with the hose pipe. We had a lot of fun, it lasted for about two hours.

The kids got bored of it eventually and went indoors to shower. I thought as I’m grubby already and as the kids have been running in and out of the kitchen, I’ll just scrub the kitchen floor. So I put the bins outside, cleared everything off the floor, poured the cleaning agents down, gave them five minutes to do whatever it is they do and then went down on my hands and knees and started scrubbing with my new scrubbing brush. It took best part of an hour to get a proper shine on the floor that had become so dull over the few years we’ve been living at this property.

Later on, I went out and to bring the bins back in and saw my neighbour standing at the bottom of my drive having a cigarette not looking too happy about something.

As the sun was still out, I though I’ll go have a little chat with him, keep him company while he’s having his nicotine fix.

“Hi, you ok?” I greeted him.

“Not really..!!”

“Oh, that don’t sound good, what’s up?”

“You need to sort it out lad” he began “I mean, what you do in doors is up to you – but seriously…”

“I don’t follow. Have I done something to upset you? Were the kids too noisy while we playing in the garden?” It occurred to me then that he works nights and may have been trying to sleep when we were having a laugh outside.

“Nah – the kids were ok. I haven’t been in work all week so it’s not that.” He flicked the cigarette butt onto the road and lit up another one cigarette straight away. He must be stressed to be smoking this much.

“Off all week. Done anything nice?” I tried to steer the conversation to a positive.

“Yeah – been getting nagged all week. That’s nice isn’t it? For HER…!!!”

Hmmm…. Can I say anything right today? What’s his problem?

“You know what Tahir, you know what my wife said to me today?”

Uh oh – here we go again…

“She called me upstairs. She was stood at the top of the stairs shouting her head off. I knew it wasn’t a spider or something silly like that. She was actually shouting. I rushed to see what was the matter, spilled the coffee I was holding as I tried to put it down, kicked the door with my little toe as I rushed through it. Ran up the stairs, and while I was going up I noticed she was at the window looking out towards your house. I asked her what was up and she said ‘why can’t you be more like Tahir, he’s finished cleaning his wifes car and now he’s scrubbing the kitchen floor for her’ I mean, come on – seriously dude – grow a pair will ya!!”

“Woah – she shouted you to the top of the stairs just to show you that I’m scrubbing my kitchen floor?”

“No – she wanted to show me what I should be doing.” He sighed as he lit the third cigarette “she’s been nagging me to do things all week. I mean it’s not often I get to enjoy time off during the day. And with the weather how it’s been, I just wanted to relax. When you’re relaxing the last thing you want is the constant buzzing of a nagger in your ear.”

“Why don’t you just do a couple of things before she can say anything and then then IF she does nag, all you have to say is ‘I’ve done X Y and Z and I’ll do the rest another day’ Surely she doesn’t expect it all to done in ONE day?”

"Cos I actually HAVE a pair" was his reply as he walked back into his house slamming the door behing him.