Around My Kitchen Table: Life With A Handyman

ONE of my friends expressed some envy that I was living with a man who was so skilled. Yes, the better half is a cabinetmaker who can expertly turn his hand to most things practical.

Hands up all you women who wish you were married to a man so handy? Well, you can put them down again, if my experience is anything to go by.

The fact that he is perfectly capable of being a demon around the house doesn't mean he actually is.

I may live with a man with qualifications in all things useful (he's got certificates and everythin') but my house is a miles away from an ideal home because it goes like this...

Certificated man spends all day hammering, mending, making, scraping and building so the last thing he wants to do when he comes home is start all over again.

I sometimes get so frustrated that I take up the paintbrush myself. He is horrified because he knows that I’m Mrs Slapdash and will never finish the job to his exacting requirements.

“Drop that paintbrush, and step away from the wall,” he says, eyes narrowed to slits.

He carefully removes the paintbrush from my hand as I try to scrape off the paint that is covering my hair, face, hands, arms and old T-shirt. Now you’d think that this would be his cue to take over, to finish the job with a few majestic sweeps of the brush.

“There, darling, that’s the way we paint a wall.”

But, no. The paintbrush goes into the turps for another day. It feels like the last person to decorate my house was a Neanderthal with a handful of charcoal, painting aurochs and bison.

Still, as my lovely late mother never tired of telling me: “Cobblers’ children always have the worst shoes.”