Tim Dowling: the Electric Car Charger Installation Saga Begins With a Neighbour's Question

On a Wednesday morning the doorbell rings while I'm working in the kitchen. My wife, who is expecting a delivery, opens the door. No, I don't want brake pads, she says.

I don't hear the reply. Because I'm not a garage, my wife says. Do I look like a garage?

There actually is a small garage just beyond the end of our back garden. Only a brick wall separates it from my office shed – my working days are punctuated by the bright ring of dropped wrenches and the grating whine of power tools. Because of this proximity, we get a lot of the mechanic's post, and many of his deliveries come to us first.

Sometimes it's brake pads; sometimes it's a headlamp unit for an Audi A3. Once I was asked to sign for a smashed-up BMW on a low-loader at 11pm. We're on friendly terms with the mechanic – he has parking spaces we sometimes borrow – so it's in a spirit of neighbourly diplomacy that I walk round to his premises with the two shock absorbers I found leaning against my front door when I arrived home on Friday afternoon.