I am now the woman who lives the other side of a comedy doorbell!

We arrived home, after a long weekend visiting family, to find a surprisingly amount of post awaiting us. When we were younger, childless and playful, one of our favourite games on the return drive home was to place a bet on how many answering messages and how many items of post there would be. Ever the optimist, and suffering from delusions of grandeur about our popularity, I would always lose. Now we are older, child-full and deprived of sleep, our conversations on the journey home are usually brief, factual and loaded with subtext, so the huge pile of post was a pleasant welcome.

Amongst the drivel of junk mail there were also late birthday cards with hidden delights, a cheque from the DVLA and a parcel delivery notification which read 'look in your Green Box'. For those of you not in the same borough council, the Green Box is the recycling tub for glass and cans, which we keep in our front garden (we are too lazy to carry it through from the back every fortnight and we quite like broadcasting are alcohol consumption, it gives us street cred). Anyhow, there in the Green Box was in fact a parcel, clearly the postman had insider knowledge to its contents and deemed the Green Box a worthy safe guard.

Last week, when things were intense because I had just turned  31, a mini-tantrum arose when I missed a delivery of Birthday Flowers due to the broken doorbell; The Future Husband had ordered a new one - with 15 different rings including Jingle Bells, Chopsticks, a cuckoo and Yankee Doodle Dandy! Fortunately, amongst the fifteen classy tones was a traditional "ding dong". Unfortunately, our 3 year old has already discovered how to change the ring tone (from a device inside the house, plugged in at child level), and does so whenever boredom trickles near him. This means, we never know what is going to jingle through the house - Silent Night went off earlier when the window cleaner called. Said window cleaner has seen me answer the door wearing only a swimming costume in November (another story); therefore he wasn’t at all flummoxed to hear a novelty Christmas doorbell at Easter.

I fear embarrassing times lie ahead, for the woman who has a comedy doorbell…