Tim Dowling: I could look out the window all day – so why bother having curtains?

As a dedicated observer of things happening right outside my house, I can testify that that big puddle has been there for three months

I’ve never needed to be convinced of the cognitive benefits of looking out the window. I would do it all day if I thought people couldn’t see me.

I’m currently staring out of our front window, arms folded, at the large puddle running along the road’s edge outside our house.

It normally appears after a sustained period of rain, and disappears after a day or two. But as a dedicated observer of things happening outside this window, I can testify that the puddle has now been there for three uninterrupted months. It’s a foot deep in the middle and too wide to jump across – more moat than puddle. I’ve come to suspect that rain has nothing to do with it: the puddle is being fed by an underground source.

Today’s events seem to confirm my opinion: as I watch, a man in a hi-vis vest is placing cones around the edge of the puddle.

“This is a big day for you, isn’t it?” my wife says. I don’t know how long she’s been standing right behind me.

“It’s a big day for all of us,” I say, without turning round.

“Something is actually happening outside your window,” she says.

“I knew if I was patient, this moment would come,” I say.

“We need to do something about these curtains,” she says.

I have an idea what she’s talking about: the curtains are heavy, and over time large horizontal tears have appeared on the lining side. This looks terrible, but only if you’re outside looking in, and only when the curtains are drawn. I do not consider this any kind of priority.

But I have a terrible feeling that when my wife says we need to do something about these curtains, she might mean today. I’m in the process of formulating a non-committal reply when I turn round and see she’s holding a ladder.

“Oh no!” I say.

“It’s not like you’re doing anything else,” she says. “You’re literally staring out the window.”

“It has cognitive benefits!”

Knowing my tendency to panic when an unscheduled chore appears in my day, my wife speaks in a soothing voice.

“I think if you can just take them down, I might be able to unpick the lining,” she says.

“Fine,” I say, hoping that the unpicking part will take more than a day, pushing the reinstallation into next week.

Once I climb the ladder I recall that these curtains and I have a lot of history. I remember the era when the right curtain would roll completely off the end of the track and collapse to the floor every time you tried to open it, until I invented some bodged a remedy that still seems to be working.

It takes 15 minutes to unhook both curtains, by which time the men in the street are gone. Whatever happened out there is over, and I missed it.

“So yeah, you get unpicking,” I say. “And I’ll be out in the kitchen just looking at …”

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” my wife says. “Look, the lining is all sewn up into the pleats.”

“Oh dear,” I say.

“Maybe I could just cut it across the top,” she says. “But will that look even worse?”

“You have a think,” I say. “Take your time.”

I make a coffee and take it to my office, with a vague plan to sit in there for the rest of the day. After half an hour, my wife comes to find me.

“I’ve had an idea,” she says.

“Uh-oh,” I say, following her back to the living room.

She points to the curtains hanging over the side door, which looks out onto a brick wall.

“Let’s put these,” she says, “over there.”

“Really?” I say. “Are they the same size?”

“Let’s measure,” she says.

The curtains are not the same size: to swap them will also require the transfer of six curtain sliders – three per side.

“Even so,” I say, “one set of curtains will never fully close. And the other will never fully open.”

“It’s still better,” my wife says.

The switch takes over an hour. The only reason it doesn’t take longer is because my wife decides she prefers the side door curtainless.

“Really?” I say. “Won’t it be cold?”

“We can try it for a couple of weeks, and see,” she says.

“I like the sound of that,” I say, folding up the ladder.

The afternoon stretches before me, except there’s no milk, so I put on my coat and head to the shops. On my return I notice a sign has gone up in front of the house, announcing remedial work on the puddle, by the water company, beginning a week hence. A date, I think, for the diary.