Once the good weather broke and it started raining we had no excuse to sit in the garden doing nothing when we weren't at work.

I eventually got round to the ironing that had been sitting in the linen basket for three or four weeks, which was good because it meant we all had knickers and socks again.

I don't usually iron these but they all get entwined with the rest of the laundry and usually I have to do the ironing to find them.

Realising I'd picked up a new pack of knickers in Asda just because I couldn't find any clean ones finally prompted me into action.

Him indoors finally finished the last bits of decorating that had been waiting since the new kitchen was put in earlier in the year.

There wasn't much to do but as my brother said, when we jokingly pointed out the missing bits, if you don't attend to them in the first six months after you've supposedly finished the decorating, they will still be left in six years' time.

Luckily we managed it in five months and one week, otherwise I guess I'd still have an unpainted radiator for years ahead.

Then him indoors decided he needed a haircut. He hates the barbers and views them all with as much superstition as he views dentists, doctors and other institutions.

I think the barber thing came from a visit he made to smarten himself up before visiting my parents. His request for a short back and sides was translated by an over-enthusiastic junior into a shaven back and sides with a rather strange mochican-style quiff along the front and top.

This might have been OK back in our punk days in the late Seventies but even he and I have grown up a bit since then.

Ever since his hair was butchered he has pestered me to do it for him instead. My skills as a hairdresser are infamous rather than famous so he's very trusting, especially as the only training I've ever had was to go out with a hairdresser three boyfriends before him when I was still in my teens.

Years ago my sister let me cut her hair after I had announced how capably I could create a perfect page boy style.

It wasn't my fault her hair grew strangely on one side which meant she ended up with a perfect page boy on one side and a mess on the other.

It was years before she forgave me.

Anyway, I got out my scissors and gave him indoors a crop which turned out quite well actually. Perhaps I should be renamed Scissors McCall.