IT’S not often that the arrival of pedlars of religious tracts, brazen charity muggers or trick or treaters is greeted with beams of delight at Hextol Towers.

They are given the shortest of shrift, more often than not, but the two evangelists who called the other day must have thought their luck was in when the door was thrown open by a radiant Mrs Hextol.

Alas for them, her smiling face and my hoots of delight from the kitchen did not mean they had netted a couple of converts – we were just celebrating the fact that one of my DIY adventures had actually worked.

We have lived in this house for well over 30 years, and most of our regular visitors come in via the back door.

The front door is seldom used, except by the postman, delivery men and strangers.

We have never felt it necessary to install a doorbell, because a rattle of the letterbox is usually enough to alert us to the arrival of unexpected callers.

We did once install an ornate cast iron bell, a souvenir from some foreign part, but after only a couple of months, the dinger fell off, and it was never replaced.

We also have a built-in caller detector in the form of the dog, whose Jodrell Bank ears pick up intruders as soon as they lay a finger on the garden gate.

She blows up like a puffer fish and launches into a frantic fusilade of barking, and if she is in the back garden, she hurtles along the side of the house and hurls herself at the middle gate like Cerberus at the gates of Hades.

Her vocal presence certainly discourages all but the most determined callers, one of whom made a Red Rum leap over the high fence into next door’s garden when she took exception to his attempt to deliver some advertising material.

In recent months however, my increasing hardness of hearing has come into play, for on more than one occasion, I have come out of my birdwatching reveries in the conservatory to find that we have had callers that neither I nor the dog had been aware of,

While I have been chortling at the resident blackbird which bullies the coal tits off the choicest fat ball and mealworm compote before being bullied itself by a positive murmuration of thuggish midden pickers, testy notes have been pushed through the door to say that an unsuccessful attempt was made to deliver a parcel, read the electric meter or collect a charity bag.

Parcels have even been left on the step when I have been sitting only yards from the front door, so while I question the vigour which was applied to rattling the letterbox, it has become increasingly clear that something must be done.

Mrs Hextol decided the answer was a doorbell, a decision which left me wincing in anticipation of my usual failure with anything that involves wires, drills and screwdrivers.

To my delight, the device she purchased was entirely battery operated, meaning I did not have to get involved with mains electricity, a medium which has been known to set the soles of my trainers smoking on more than one occasion.

All I had to do was stick batteries in the various components and then screw the bell push to the wall outside the front door.

Even I could manage that, even though it did take four hours and involve the use of some 20 rawlplugs.

Eventually, everything was ready, so I summoned Mrs Hextol to perform the first ceremonial pressing of the bell – and nothing happened.

I was aghast, and read the instructions frantically to discover that one set of batteries have to be inserted within 30 seconds of the other, so they can connect over the ether, and after several minutes of fiddling and diddling, she tried again – and the ice cream man-like tones boomed out across the house.

We danced a little jig and noted with the greatest of delight that, like the Beverley Hillbillies, the dog had not yet twigged that the mysterious music coming out of thin air meant there was someone at the door to be barked at.

As the next door neighbours were away, we could ding dong merrily for hours, and were in transports of delight when the delivery man rang the bell the next day to deliver a parcel which would not fit through the letterbox, while the dog snoozed obliviously.

“Has the dog passed away?” he asked hopefully.