Imagine, for a moment, that you are in the matchmaking business. (I can’t, by the way. The concept of taking responsibility for recommending which two people will live happily ever after is one I simply cannot grasp – how does anyone dare?) You decide to devise a simple quiz to help you find the perfect lid for each pot on your books: you will prepare a list of ten questions, each question selected in the belief that if a couple give identical answers to all ten questions, they will be a match made in heaven.

So, my question to you is: what are your ten questions?

As you start to think about that, those of you who are, or have ever been, married may find yourselves realising that this is in fact the list of ten questions that you wish you had asked your prospective spouse before the fact…and didn’t.

While you’re thinking about that, let’s consider the questions you probably did discuss: taste in music, literature, the arts; preferred holiday destinations and types; number of children you would like to have; political positions.

Far be it from me to denigrate this list, but lots of happily married couples conduct parallel but separate arts lives – there’s really no problem in feeling differently about ballet, Lionel Shriver or Phantom of the Opera, for example. Even holidays can be taken separately (although Bill Gates’ recent experience suggests that that is probably better if the husband’s holiday is not taken with an ex-girlfriend). Alternatively, they can go to Barcelona and she can lounge on the beach while he visits museums, or he can watch the bullfighting while she paraglides. As for children, there may be couples who discussed how many children they wanted, came to a joint decision, and ended up with that number, but my gut feeling is that life takes over in more cases than not.

So, I’m not at all convinced that these are the important questions. By now, you probably have at least two or three of your own questions in mind, and you may also have realized that they potentially say a lot about your particular marriage. I thought this week I might offer you some of mine. (Although I’m beginning to feel this is not one of my smarter thoughts.)

To make it more fun, I’ll give you the multiple-choice answers before each question, and, if you feel so inclined, you can try and guess the question before reading it.

Q1: 18; 21; 24; 27.
What is the optimum temperature for the air-conditioning thermostat?
I know that one partner can wear a thick winter sweater, or the other can strip down to Bermuda shorts, but the whole point of air conditioning is to avoid the need for that. Incidentally, this question is as relevant to office-sharing colleagues as it is to life partners. Those of you who have worked in mixed-sex office environments will, I am sure, be nodding in agreement at that last sentence. There is, apparently, a scientific reason why women prefer a higher room temperature than men.

Among other things, women have a lower metabolic rate, leading to less heat production, and they have a larger ratio of body surface to body mass, allowing for greater heat loss. If two people are the same height, weight and age, if you only change whether it’s a male or female, you expect 10% to 20% difference in metabolic rate. If you have a higher body surface area to lose heat relative to the volume available to produce heat, you tend to lose heat more easily and are more sensitive to cold.

Incidentally, a temperature of between 23^o and 26^o C is apparently acceptable to 80% of men and women. (You can read more about this here.)

Q2: Up; Down; As you found it; As you used it; The reverse of as you used it.
In what position do you leave the toilet seat after use?

Is it only chivalry that declares that toilet seats should be left in the down position? In a house occupied by two people, one of each sex, there is a case to be made for leaving the toilet seat down if you are the man and up if you are the woman. Not only does this show consideration to your other half, it also reflects the probability that the next user will be your other half rather than you.

Of course, there is an aesthetic aspect to this question, in addition to the utilitarian one, and I am prepared to accept that a closed seat is more pleasing to the eye.

Q3: Wardrobe; Chair; Floor.
When you undress, where do you put the clothes you intend to wear again?

Q4: Daily; Weekly; Monthly; Before parental visits.
How frequently do you clean the house?

I could go on…but probably not if I value my life.

Questions 3 and 4 are of particular interest in our marriage, because they represent that most dangerous of surfaces – a fluid playing field. Take Question 3, for example. Growing up, it is fair to say that Bernice and I were both the untidy sibling. We each shared a bedroom with our older, tidier sibling.

I understand that Bernice’s sister Sue drew an imaginary line down the middle of their bedroom and forbade Bernice to bring any of her stuff over that line. Martin was of a milder nature (as I grow older, and reflect on our childhood, I recognize and appreciate more and more the length of his suffering of me as a younger brother) and I had an easier time of it.

When we married, we each felt we had indeed found our perfect partner….someone just as messy and untidy. In our early married years, our bedroom – indeed, much of the time, our whole house – was a tip.

Over the last decades, something extraordinary has happened. We have both reformed, to the point where, in our own eyes, we are borderline obsessively tidy. Several factors have contributed to this admirable, if slightly disturbing, state of affairs. The departure of both children; the discarding of large quantities of junk; several waves of renovation, so that our kitchen and bedrooms now have sufficient storage space for all we possess. Growing older (some of us).

Magically, Bernice and I have progressed along this path in extraordinary unison; at no point has it been one of us dragging the other screaming into a more ordered world. It’s true that I had a brief flirtation with KonMa, the Japanese decluttering method described in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (which manifested itself in my case more in tender rolling of individual socks and less in laying teeshirts out and listening to discover which of them spoke to me).

However, Bernice was very tolerant, and hardly laughed at all, and resisted the temptation to gloat when I gave the whole thing up as a load of nonsense a short time later. Apart from that brief aberration, we have consistently seen eye to eye on what is a desirable level of order in the home.

Which brings us, sadly, to Question 4. This is the fatal question for us, because we have drifted apart, particularly over the last couple of years. I would be the first to admit that Bernice has always been more troubled by household dust than I have. There is a part of me that admires Quentin Crisp’s discovery that the cumulative weight of dust compacts the pile, so that it never gets deeper. (You can hear his message of hope at 2:00 minutes into this documentary.) However, I am not proud of that admiration, and, while much more than the lion’s share of cleaning (indeed, of all the housework) has always been Bernice’s, I’ve tried to play at least some part over the years.

In the last decade, our circumstances have changed. With just the two of us here, there are rooms that are hardly used. We are also both retired now, and, theoretically, have more time for housework. At the same time, we are not as young as we once were, so that housework now looms as a much more formidable task.

I also have to say that, when the stairs and first floor were carpeted throughout, the dust was much less visible, and the question of dust could be addressed less frequently. Now that our floors are tiled or parqueted throughout, every mote of dust is visible. Add to that the desert exposure of Ma’ale Adumim, and you have a situation where there are a mighty mount of motes.

When Bernice’s Mum, z”l, used to complain that, as she dusted a table, she could see the dust settle again before her eyes, we used to laugh. Now, to my horror (and, I believe, to hers) Bernice has been infected with the same madness. There are some days when she seems to divide all of her time between bemoaning how filthy the house is (which it never is), bewailing the fact that cleaning is a Sisyphean task (which it certainly is), and cleaning (which never seems to me to be as urgent a priority as it clearly is to her).

Currently, I have a get-out-of-jail card – my crumbling hip. However, next Monday I am due to have it replaced (of which more next week). Once I have fully recovered, I can see that I will not be able to continue to get away with refusing to be associated too closely with cleaning the house.

I am, it is fair to say, a major contributor to the dirt: in the kitchen, particularly, I leave behind me a trail of destruction: I almost always do all of my washing up (although occasionally some of the doughier items are a bit curate’s-egg-y). I make a reasonable-ish job of the work surfaces. However, I leave the floor looking like CIS have just sprayed their magic spray and switched on the ultra-violet lamps.

Meanwhile, Tao is enjoying the latest toy/piece of equipment his father has made for him. Fortunately, they won’t be bringing it when they come to stay (of which more next week); if they did, I suspect cleaning the house might be an even more daunting task.