I want the list on the fridge to be mine to clear

Every house has a list. The door that catches, the cracked tile, the shelf that has been leaning since March, the thing everybody steps over and nobody deals with. I want that list to be mine, permanently, and I want somebody who adds to it without first checking whether I have time.

Thirty nine, the city centre, a maintenance electrician, out at six and home by four, evenings entirely my own.

What makes this a duty rather than me simply being handy is the standard. I want a woman who looks at the work, tells me it is not right, and has me do it again. I have done favours for friends for twenty years and not one of them has ever said do that again, and it turns out that is the thing I have actually been missing all along.

I did it properly for three years, for a woman with a terrace in Salford that needed everything doing. There was a list, a fixed Saturday, and a folder of what had been done and what was next. She sold the house, it ended, and nothing since has come close.

Nothing paid, and I buy nothing, because the day materials come out of my pocket this becomes something else. What I do not want is to be rung when a thing breaks. I want the standing Saturday whether or not anything is wrong.