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Hands up all those women who shudder at those three large letters - D.I.Y. - especially when mentioned in the same breath as their husbands! Whether you're married to an incompetent enthusiast, a 'put-offer', or a reckless expert, you're sure to share my exasperation one way or another.

One Sunday morning I tottered into the bathroom to find my nine year old sleepily pulling the chain. It responded in a most alarming fashion, spluttering and spewing with gusto. We grabbed each other and peered into the bubbling pan. I reached out my hand to check the cold water tap and it too jolted and jerked into life. Melissa shook her head, "Michael!"

Michael, not our friendly poltergeist but our friendly neighbour. Michael is convinced of his DIY ability, despite damming evidence to the contrary; like the time he attempted to polish up a small scratch on the car but used the wrong product thereby burning off a huge section of paint necessitating a visit to the garage and a bill for 300! The night before our toilet morphed into an alien swamp, Diane, his long-suffering wife, arrived for a barbecue - with children, without Michael. Michael, it transpired, had embarked on yet another ill-fated project involving the U-bend. A small plumbing job had resulted in Michael chiselling through a major water pipe, thereby launching an unstoppable jet of water into the kitchen. Diane's account of frantic calls to plumbers with Michael screaming instructions, not to mention a few expletives, from under the sink, utilising anything to hand to create a bung was hysterical and I've got to admire her humour in the face of a flooding kitchen.

We didn't actually see Michael that night but he kept in constant touch by mobile phone. Having rigged up an ingenious pumping system involving the hose from the tumble dryer and the children's plastic play tunnel, he managed to direct all water outside the house. This allowed him to hotfoot it to B&Q in search of the bits and pieces that would stem the flow until a plumber could arrive on Monday!

John (he's mine!) loathes D.I.Y. in any shape or form and courageously fends off all my nagging. The most irritating thing is that he is actually quite capable, unless of course you count the time he stomped upstairs to fit the new bathroom carpet. Three hours later I returned home with the children to discover that he had meticulously measured and cut the carpet using the old one as a template but had faced it the wrong way so that we now had perfectly

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