My sisters are visiting from the US. One has arrived ahead of the other, and I’ve left her in charge because I have to be away for one night.
Before I go I give her a thorough briefing: which key opens what, how to work the coffee machine. I walk her to the tube station where my second sister will arrive the next morning, and then walk her back, testing her on the names of the streets.
I don’t mind – I’d want someone to do this for me – but it reminds me how many aspects of my daily existence require detailed instructions. Life seems pretty simple until I have to explain it to someone else.
“You must pull slightly as you turn the key,” I say when we reach the house. “Because the door is warped.”
“OK,” my sister says.
I outline the recycling regime, teach my sister how to overcome the recently de-handled kitchen tap, and explain the procedure for when the alarm system starts sending a distress signal at four in the morning. I show her how to use the washing machine, but during the demonstration I do something that locks the door permanently.
“Oh well,” I say. “I’m sure it will open at some point.”
The next morning I’m up early to catch a train. I find my sister in the kitchen, failing to make coffee on her first solo attempt.
“The dog sometimes barks from outside in the night,” I say. “Because it thinks the cat is on the other side of the flap waiting to pounce.”
“OK,” my sister says.
“Of course, the cat no longer waits on the other side of the flap,” I say, “but the dog doesn’t know that.”
“This isn’t working,” she says, handing me the coffee filter. I examine it.
“You have overpacked the grounds,” I say.
My wife and I set off at 9am. We have been on our train for about half an hour when I receive the first text.
“The dog whizzed on the hallway floor,” my sister writes. “Not sure if that is normal.”
“That is normal.” I write.
Half an hour later I receive another text from her, explaining that my other sister is convinced she’s on the wrong train from the airport.
“Call her,” it says.
I call my other sister and tell her not to worry if the carriage display board isn’t showing the correct station; it will flash up as the next stop when the time comes.
“And if for some reason it doesn’t stop,” I say, “get off at Paddington, cross the platform and go back one.”
“OK,” she says.
When I came to the UK 30 years ago I was so overwhelmed I could barely function, let alone appreciate London’s grimy splendour. As I looked out of the window of a car driven by the woman who would eventually become my wife, I noticed just one thing.
“All these ‘To let’ signs,” I said. “How come no one has thought to deface them so they say ‘Toilet’?”
“Because no one here is that stupid,” my wife-to-be said. I thought: someone that stupid is here now.
What I’m saying is: I remember what it’s like to be at sea in a foreign land, unable to make jokes or work a dishwasher. But I don’t know which things I wouldn’t understand if I were arriving here today.
My phone goes quiet for a while, but the next morning I’m woken up by a fresh text, asking for some pointers regarding the loo.
“No flush happening,” it says.
“Give the chain four or five sharp pulls,” I write. “If that doesn’t work you’ll have to get the ladder.”
A few minutes later I receive another text that says: “Where is the ladder?”
At this point I’m beginning to wonder how much of my sisters’ confusion is cultural – ie, based on an unfamiliarity with high-mounted, chain-pull toilet cisterns – and how much of it is of my making. I tried to fix the loo before they arrived, but I clearly made it worse.
I receive another text, which says: “Do you have rug cleaner?”
As my wife and I travel back the next afternoon, I’m worried about what I will find at home: two middle-aged American women huddled in one dark room while the alarm sounds and water jets from the hole where the kitchen tap used to be.
My sisters aren’t even in when I get there: they’re at some pub in the West End. When they do finally turn up they tell a long story about eating lunch in a cafe and then trying to pay with British banknotes from the early 1990s.
“Yeah, that won’t work,” I say.
“That’s what the guy said,” my sister says. “But he took ’em in the end.”