Tim Dowling: it seems the real moral of this story is that I’m easily led

When our street is closed for roadworks, I join in with the neighbours’ outrage. My wife, meanwhile, charms the man in the hard hat into reopening it

Early on Friday morning my wife finds me sitting in bed, looking at my phone. She is dressed already, and holding keys.

“They’re blocking off the whole road,” she says.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But you just lie there while I find out what’s going on.”

After a few minutes, I go downstairs to peer through the curtains. My wife is talking to a man in a hi-vis vest and hard hat, who is pushing a barrier aside for her. His colleague, meanwhile, is drawing marks on the road with a paint sprayer.

An hour later, I climb the stairs to my wife’s office, with its commanding view of the street, now cordoned off with cones. A digger is parked across the road, surrounded by temporary fencing. Rain is bucketing down.

“I had no idea this was happening,” I say, looking out.

“There was supposed to be a letter,” she says, “but apparently nobody got one.”

The man in the hard hat walks past our gate, pursued by two other men: our nextdoor neighbour, and the guy who runs the car garage on the other side of the garden wall from my office shed. They are both clearly offering strong objections to the proceedings.

The guy from the garage glances up and sees me standing at the window, looking at him. He raises his arm like he’s throwing something over his shoulder, beckoning me to come down.

On my way out the door, I grab a raincoat and hold it over my head, joining the discussion at my gate.

“Did you get a letter?” says the guy from the garage.

“No,” I say. I notice the man in the hard hat is holding what appears to be a sodden example of the letter in question.

“Can I read that?” I say. He hands it to me.

“I’ve got five cars coming today,” says the guy from the garage. “How am I gonna get them past this?”

I scan the dripping letter, which is headed Essential Sewer Repair Works. A key sentence reads: “We politely ask that you remove any vehicles you may need to use.”

“Two weeks?” I say. My neighbour shakes his head.

“What are we supposed to do?” says the guy from the garage. I feel as if I’m part of a tiny mob ganging up on an accidental representative of intransigent officialdom. It feels good.

“My car is an electric car,” I say, thinking: I really have to stop telling people that.

“So I’d like to just charge it here before I move it,” I say. “Can I do that?” The man nods and extends an upward palm: your wish is my command.

Having solved my problem and absolutely nobody else’s, I return indoors, thinking: sorted.

I’m sitting in the kitchen when my wife comes back from the supermarket in the early afternoon.

“So now they’re not closing the road after all,” she says, “because I was so nice. They’re leaving one lane clear so we can all get in and out. Everyone was rude to them, but I was nice, so they’re doing it as a favour to me.”

“There’s something weird about this story,” I say.

“The road is open, I’m nice, the end,” she says.

On Sunday morning, my wife and I set off somewhere in the car, edging past the fence protecting the hole, which is already big enough to bury a bus in. The man in the hard hat is busy directing the digger, but when he sees my wife he smiles and waves. She rolls down her window.

“Are people still giving you grief?” she says.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “One lady just pulled up and swore at me.”

“I said, ‘Where are you going?’ and she was like, ‘I’m trying to get to church.’”

“Even your husband was joining in the other day,” he says.

“I wasn’t really rude,” I say. “I was just being mordant.”

“I’m afraid he’s easily led,” my wife says. “See you later!”

As we drive off I think: the roadworks haven’t been in place for 48 hours, and already the moral of this story has changed three times.