Why I’m sleeping in the garden shed

Two and a half years ago, I wrote a column about how I’d started sleeping in my garden office. No, not because Caroline had kicked me out of the master bedroom, but because we were having the house rewired and the builders needed us to vacate our room at seven o’clock every morning. The move was supposed to be temporary, but I liked the arrangement so much it became permanent. Unfortunately it’s causing a few tensions in the marriage.

Most wives who have had to put with their husband’s snoring for more than 20 years would welcome this set-up, but Caroline is a bit nonplussed. She doesn’t miss the nightly tug-of-war over the duvet, or me trying to sneak in without waking her after a night on the tiles (imagine a hippopotamus in a furniture showroom). Rather, she doesn’t like the idea of me not being in the house in case we suffer a home invasion in the night.