Real life | 27 November 2010

As Stefano the builder positioned his drill, I sat watching him serenely. In a few minutes my home improvements would be complete. One last storage unit would be fixed to the kitchen wall, thus bringing to conclusion three weeks of painting, plastering, carpeting and shelving. It has been an exciting time. Stefano and I are now joined at the hip. We had gone to Ikea to buy the shelving unit together in his battered Skoda estate, which lurched its way eccentrically around the South Circular because Stefano only uses fourth gear, including when trying to pull away from traffic lights.

As the car wrenched and choked, I kept encouraging him to try first or second. But he was too distracted. He was talking about corruption in Albania. ‘You know they charge extra to get passport quickly? If you don’t put cash inside your application they don’t give you passport for months.’