As part of the continuing home improvements, we decided to get daughter some new bedroom furniture.

Her old stuff was falling apart and her wardrobe was just not big enough to accommodate her expanding teenage fashion collection.

She kept using the excuse that the reason most of her belongings seemed to spend most of their time on her floor was because half of the drawers in her chest of drawers couldn't be used.

Personally I think the real reason is, just like most teenagers and especially like most girl teenagers, she is just totally messy and untidy.

Because her room is up in the attic it is very difficult to get furniture up the narrow staircase.

This means any new stuff really has to be of the flat-packed home-assembly type.

"Aaaaagghhhh, not flat- packed," said him indoors when I broke the bad news.

"Please don't do that to me. Can't we buy her some nice ready made pine furniture instead?"

"No," I replied, "she hates pine furniture because she is a teenager and has no taste. She has seen some cool modern stuff that she likes and that we can afford.

"I have ordered it and it is flat-packed and it is here.

"You will need to put it together because that is a boy's job."

"How come your feminism goes out of the window whenever there is something difficult or dirty to do?" he wanted to know."

"Because I am a woman and am entitled to change my mind," I told him, "any way I will help you."

'That's even worse," he said, "we will end up having a huge row and will nearly split up over it all and that will be before we've even got one item of furniture together. By the time the furniture is intact we won't be."

"Don't be so pessimistic," I said, "I'm sure we won't."

Actually they do seem to have changed the method of self-assembly furniture since we last tried to construct something as, once we'd mastered the art of not putting screw b27659 in until the last minute rather than at the start like the instructions said, we found things went together and stayed together.

We quickly assembled the large chest of drawers, the small five-drawer chest and the bedside cabinet.

Him indoors even let me use his drill and I felt just like Mrs Bob the builder.

Then we came to the wardrobe.

"This should be easy," we agreed, "no drawers in this one, just two sides and a back and front."

The problem was that it is very difficult to get two sides and a back and front to stay in the right places without moving when they are not attached and it is very difficult to attach them when they keep moving about.

Our conversation became the muttered tight-lipped variety.

"No darling don't hold it like that, it's making this bit move and I can't fasten the screw."

"It's moved."

"I can't find the screw darling because it appears to have gone down a crack in the floorboards."

We carried on in this coldly polite fashion, while at the same time berating each other for being idiots in our heads, until all of a sudden the whole thing collapsed on top of us.

I got a huge scratch and a bruise on my rib cage and he got a minor head injury. Still we doggedly carried on and next time it worked and the wardrobe was up.

"What do you think?" we excitedly asked daughter as she meandered up the stairs to see what was going on.

"Yeah, it's fine, thanks," she said throwing her coat on the floor and herself on the bed.