Women who live without a man about the house have to get used to doing certain things for themselves ... things like cleaning out blocked gutters.

I realised all was not well with the gutter at the back of my house when it started to overflow during the first heavy rainfalls of the autumn we had a couple of weeks ago.

Overflow is putting it mildly. The water was coming down with all the force of a mini Niagara Falls. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration but only slight.

Not to worry, I thought. I'll get it sorted when The Mother comes back from her holiday.

Now any of you who are imagining a frail old woman being forcibly sent up a ladder and on to the roof, much as small boys were once forcibly sent up chimneys, should stop this instant.

True, someone would be going up a ladder and on to the roof (a flat roof I should point out) and that someone might well be regarded as old by anyone under 35, but that someone was me.

And the ladder? Well, amongst the worldly goods my father left behind when he died was an extending ladder, the sort that people with heads for heights use when painting gables, replacing roof tiles - or cleaning out gutters.

It's very heavy and difficult to manoeuvre. My father once knocked out a bedroom window while struggling with the brute.

A friend of mine has used it to paint the back of the house but otherwise it simply takes up space. It obviously needs a new home, a home, for example, with someone who has a head for heights and spends their time painting gables, replacing roof tiles and cleaning out gutters.

When The Mother returned I told her that I, yes I who have vertigo, intended to use the ladder to climb on to the roof. She would be needed to help position the ladder against the wall of the house. Then she would hold it steady while I climbed.

She was not, you may be surprised to learn, exactly in favour of the idea.

But I was not to be dissuaded. I dragged the ladder out and tried to lift it. The ladder swayed sideways almost hitting the French windows and I screamed.

That had The Mother running. She tried to grab the ends of the ladder as it swung towards her.

"Hold it there! Don't let it drop!" I shouted.

I tried to steady the ladder, to straighten it and push it against the wall.

The ladder was having none of it, it seemed to be enjoying the skirmish.

The Mother and I must have looked like two comic characters from some silent movie as we struggled to gain control.

Finally we got it upright, well almost upright. It came to rest above The Mother's bedroom window. From there I knew I could stretch over and climb on to the roof.

"Stop this! You'll break your neck!" The Mother shouted as I started to climb.

Too late. I was on my way.

Suddenly the ladder shifted, ever so slightly but enough to shake my puny confidence. I was too scared to climb further up and too scared to come down. I also felt totally ridiculous.

The Mother came to the rescue (and of course she won't let me forget it).

She opened her bedroom window and helped pull me, by now minus any semblance of dignity, into the safety of her room.

"What we need," I said to her when I'd got my breath back, "is another man about the house.

"Have you ever considered getting married again?"