"It might feel sad if I hadn’t painted my eyelashes shut"

MONDAY 1.30pm: I am up a ladder, repainting the back eaves of our house, with a two litre pot of paint — and vertigo.

My husband, in leg-plaster for a torn Achilles, has been providing moral support.

This has taken many different forms; right now, he’s standing at the bottom of the ladder and eating a sandwich he made for me, which I refused stiffly, eyes front. What with the vertigo, I couldn’t look down.

He has performed other small acts of kindness too, such as making tea, which I refused in the same manner, for the same reasons. But in between the sandwich-making and the tea-making, his moral support has been unrelenting.

I’m sure I don’t know what I’d have done without all the shouts of “Don’t be daft, you’ll be grand”, “You’ve missed a bit” and “You’ve missed another bit” that have been floating up the ladder for the past couple of hours.

2pm, and I am taking a break, standing by the sink with my head under the tap, when my husband clacks into the kitchen on his crutches.

“Poor Dad,” my daughter says, entering the kitchen. “Another summer on crutches. It must be driving you mad not being able to do anything.”

“He can’t go white-water rafting for his birthday in Iceland now,” my youngest daughter says. “Poor Dad,” they say.

“That’s so sad, isn’t it, Mum?” “It might feel sad if I hadn’t just painted my eyelashes shut,” I say. “Crutches are knackering,” he sighs, limping stoically towards the table. “Oh poor Dad,” they say in unison.

Tuesday: We have had a trailer-load of stone delivered. A friend of ours is arriving later to help spread it. In the meantime I am doing it, with exceptionally bad grace; my husband is doing all that’s possible, which isn’t much when your knee is strapped at a right angle onto a fake metal post.

“You look like Oscar Pistorius in that thing,” I say, “and for God’s sake don’t fall over now and break your neck.” “Oscar Pistorius shot his wife,” he says, darkly.

Wednesday, 11am: I am mowing an acre of grass with our old lawnmower. It is as trusty as my Nissan but for years has not had a working self-propulsion lever. This grass-cutting endeavour, in terms of human energy output, is like pushing a washing machine around a field.

My husband is on moral support duty; shouting things from atop his crutches which I cannot hear over the noise of the engine, but might be “you’ve forgotten that bit behind the tree”, or “watch out for the septic tank pipe”, if his manic crutch-pointing is anything to go by.

My daughters make arrangements for my husband’s comfort with picnic blanket and cushion, so he might provide this moral support from a prone position.

They all sit down in the sun while I lean into the washing machine with my shoulder and shove.

Noon: I am taking a break on the picnic blanket. I have grass everywhere, as the lawnmower, in addition to having no self-propulsion, has no basket in which to catch the grass. I sit down. My husband reaches for his crutches as if to stand.

“I’ll make tea,” he says. My youngest daughter says, “I’ll make it Dad,” and disappears into the house.

“I’ll come with you,” my husband says, hobbling bravely behind her, “I can carry one of the cups with crutches.”

“Poor Dad,” my eldest says, “I feel so sorry for him. It’s the second summer in a row.”

“What?” I say, shaking grass out of my knickers. “It’s tragic, isn’t it?” she urges, giving me a look of stern encouragement, “especially with the Iceland trip, isn’t it Mum?”

“It might feel more tragic,” I say, “if I didn’t have grass packed against my ear-drums.”

My husband and youngest daughter return with tea. “I must do something about that lawn-mower,” my husband says, “I must start looking after it a bit.”

“Yes you must,” I say, “this lawn-mower has been faithful and unstinting in its service, but has been much overworked and overused in its long life. One day it will suddenly stop, just like that, never to start again.”

I look at him darkly. “Mum,” the girls say, “it’s not his fault he’s on crutches.”

“What?” I say, stomping back to mowing position to resume washing-machine shoving again.

It’s a good thing my ears are packed with grass or I’d be able to hear my daughters say, “God knows how she ever did nursing” and my husband respond, “Imagine — if I hadn’t got her pregnant in her third year, she might still be one.”