Saturday mornings, four hours, and that is genuinely all I have

Four hours, Saturday morning, seven until eleven. That is the whole of my availability and it has been for twelve years, because I have two jobs and a father who needs me most of the rest of the week.

Forty six, the Jersey side. Three arrangements in twelve years, all built inside that block, the longest of them five years. The five year one worked because we both stopped trying to make it bigger. Four hours, every week, for two hundred and sixty weeks, and by the end there was more between us than in either of my marriages.

What fits in four hours is more than people think. A week's worth of household work if the list is ready. The heavy things. The errands that need a car. Enough to genuinely change how somebody's week goes.

What does not fit is spontaneity, evenings, travel, or anything that assumes I can be called on. I cannot. If something goes wrong on a Wednesday I am not available, and I would rather be honest about that than be the man who apologises constantly.

Between Saturdays I am reachable in writing and I will do anything that can be done from a phone at odd hours, which is more than nothing. I want a standing list, a standard, and correction. I do not want anything physical. And I will not take money or have anything bought for me, which has come up twice and both times I was glad I had said it early.