By the way, Tony seems to think Thomas is a transvestite," Sara said, casually, about my husband.

"Yes, I know," I said, in what I hoped was an equally casual manner, as I could tell the casualness of her remark disguised a burning desire to know exactly why Tony, her muscle-bound good-looking (but married) urban housecleaner thought my desk-bound, OK-ish, married (to self) husband was a transvestite.

"Biscuit?"

We were having coffee in my kitchen, Sara having decided to stop feeling guilty about the amount of time she spent faffing around at home instead of getting down to work and justify it by comparing all time wasted while supposed to be working at home to time wasted by those supposed to be working in offices.

to lizzie_e@...... SUBJECT; COFFEE BREAK, she emailed me one morning with the following message: Fancy meeting for coffee? If we were working in an office, we'd spend at least an hour a day going to buy coffee, drinking it and chatting to colleagues in busy open-plan spaces while doing so?

I replied to Sara.webb@..... RE: COFFEE BREAK, yes to coffee and what about lunch hours, popping out to the shops, meetings in which nothing much gets done etc?

So, we agreed to stop feeling guilty about not working all the time just because we were working at home but spend more time doing the sort of work displacement activities people in offices do, as well as the sort of work displacement activities people at home do; such as hoovering, daytime TV and dog walking.

"So," Sara continued, now in my kitchen and unable to contain herself any longer. "Does Thomas borrow your underwear or what?"

I explained the origin of what I still believed to be the misunderstanding (though they do say wives are always the last to know).

This came about when eldest Rugrat saw photos of Eddie Izzard and I explained to her the basic tenets of transvestism. She then passed on her newly-discovered information to the rest of the class by informing them pictures of Korean warriors in tribal dress, which they were looking at in a lesson on other cultures, showed they were transvestites.

Teacher then asked me to stay behind and inferred they were quite happy for us to have a transvestite in the family (and inferred this might be my husband) but it would help if the school was kept informed to avoid incidents such as the above. I then bumped into Tony and told him all of the above and we then both bumped into Thomas, who was trying to fix fan belt on his car and asked if he could borrow pair of my tights to assist him in doing so.

"Oh," said Sara, appearing unsupportively disappointed that one of her close friends' husband was not a secret trannie.

Fortunately for her, the washing machine repair man arrived shortly after this conversation.

The machine had stopped working that morning, midway though a cycle and refused to let me either empty it of water or clothes.

After a not very long time (for which he charged £60) he held up a handful of 4in, slightly curved wires and announced they were the culprits as they had blocked the drainage pipe or something.

"Wires from under-wired bras," he said, winking at me as he said it.

The only flaw in his theory is that I don't wear under-wired bras ...