Is there anything more maddening than a ‘helpful’ husband!

MAX HASTINGS just loves filling the dishwasher and nipping to Tesco. But his proud boasts have his wife asking...

Surprisingly few cross words get spoken in our house ( the surprise being among friends familiar with my shortcomings), yet some were exchanged last week.

My wife, penny, exclaimed in exasperation: ‘you’ve become a kitchen pest!’ This outburst, and my aggrieved response, were prompted by a dispute about the dishwasher.

The dishwasher? yes, we squabble over it with dismaying frequency.

i cannot bear to go to bed leaving a plate ‘ unBosched’ or saucepan unscrubbed, to reproach us at breakfast time.

penny says that it is a criminal waste of electricity and detergent, to start the machine before it is full. And anyway, it is rude to stack it while she is still eating.

i mutter: ‘But you take so long.’ And so the marital ping-pong goes on.

Those who knew me 40 years ago will read the above with disbelief, because in those days i was forever under indictment for failure to do anything like my share of the domestic round, not to mention childcare. Doubts were expressed about whether i knew why Brillo pads existed.

Today, by contrast, among the manifestations of dottiness inseparable from getting older is a morbid fascination with household affairs, such as few wage slaves had time for in the last century.

i used to suppose that a new-found enthusiasm for the chores would enhance my popularity in the home, but am discovering that this ain’t necessarily so.

A glamorous female bolter once explained to me why she evicted her first husband, a decent enough fellow who had sufficient cash not to work: ‘He was always hanging about the place, poking his head in the fridge and demanding to know why there was not more butter.’

All she wanted from this hapless man was that he should absent himself from home through most of the daylight hours. And since he had nowhere to go except the golf course or his club, she dumped him.

somebody asked me the other day whether i do my writing in a shed in the garden. no, i said: in a study in the house. i did not add that penny, though a woman of saintly disposition, has offered to pay herself for such a shed to be constructed, to improve her own quality of life.

ReMeMBerthe old wife’s marriage prayer, ‘ for richer, for poorer, but please god not for lunch!’ speaking of lunch, now that i am in attendance almost every day, i take a lively interest in the food shopping, frequently cantering down to Tesco myself, returning laden with special offer loo rolls, five years’ supply of toothpaste, crates of fruit and veg.

Mrs Hastings says this is bonkers, and reflects a siege mentality left over from boarding school.

When she goes off to london to see grandchildren and suchlike, leaving me alone in the house, during idle evenings i sometimes defrost the deep freezer, bin all the stuff in the larder past its sellby date, or merely tidy the loft.

such good deeds have caused penny to become increasingly reluctant to leave home for more than an hour, because of mistrust about what mischief — as she terms it — i may make in her absence.

We also have differing views about forward planning. i try not only to schedule what book i shall be writing next year, but also to book holidays and even weekend-breaks nine months forward. And meals.

she regards it as a capital crime to raise the issue of possible menus for dinner a fortnight ahead, or worse still to do the shopping for it. ‘Food is just petrol,’ she says grumpily.

yet since we must fill the tank at least a couple of times a day, it seems rewarding to think ahead about which nozzle to select.

i find it therapeutic, poking about in the freezer to check on stocks of chickens, pizza, carbonara sauce and fish fingers. i sleep better knowing we have at least a year’s supply of potted shrimps, Tesco’s ribeye steaks, broad beans and blackcurrants from the garden. Ah yes, the vegetable garden. Mrs Hastings calculates that each leek from it costs us at least £ 1, while those from the supermarket are not only much cheaper, but don’t enter the house with a pound-weight of mud attached. i say: but think of the delights of seeing all that produce out there.

After processing a ton or so of beetroot, however, she is reluctant to agree.

Her choral refrain is a demand that i should stay out of the kitchen and get on with earning money to pay the bills, preferably at a workplace at least 100 yards and maybe even 100 miles from the house, following which she will receive me at the front door with a dazzling smile and open arms, in time for dinner.

All this prompts reflections about where a rightful division of tasks lies, in a 21st Century household. Our grown-up children take for granted that they share cooking and childcare in a fashion un-heard of a few decades ago. i cannot imagine how i could have done the work i had to get through when i was young, especially with long absences abroad as a correspondent, and later editing newspapers, if i had been obliged to do housework as well.

yet this is the new normal in the younger generation’s homes and marriages, where often both partners do demanding day jobs. it is not surprising that they often eat out, seldom read a book or go to a theatre: they are too wrecked by fulfilling the domestic round.

it is a hollow joke that TV cookery programmes are so popular, because in the average middleclass household one is far more likely to see Michelin- starred food on a screen than for anybody to have the energy to try to emulate it in their own kitchen.

Pennyis a brilliant cook, which helps to explain why she wants to shoo me out of her kitchen. i still argue defiantly that among the range of vices available to errant husbands, cleaning the place up compares favourably with infesting the pub, betting shop or go-go bar.

she disagrees. Her favourite cry of exasperation is: ‘ Why don’t you go off and write another book?’ she proposes this as an alternative to interfering with the management of the household, wherein i am deemed an infernal nuisance.

By now every sensible reader is thinking: how can the Hastings household be reduced to such a pitch of silliness that they argue about what sized saucepan to cook the peas in?

My point, however, is that many people find themselves in our predicament as they get older, because we are learning to live with leisure, such as we never possessed in the past.

since we no longer have the big family issues to worry about — where to live, which schools to send the children to, how to keep up the mortgage payments — we devote ever more time and attention to trivia.

i tell penny: we are starting to find out what ageing means, heading towards those conversations that start: ‘is it time for my medication or yours?’ she responds, with a sweet smile but between delicately gritted teeth: ‘Just keep working!’