I shall leave the recollection of my first meeting with Mr Husband on one side, for the moment. My trip down memory lane has been interrupted by a short email from Mr Vroom, thanking me for thanking him for the strawberries and the ladders I found on my doorstep. The fruit is all gone, of course, looking so cheerful and bright red in the bowl; far, far more moorish and tempting than a single apple.

Eve should have found some freshly picked strawberries for Adam, to prolong the intimacy of feeding from each other's navels. Can you really see a large apple balanced on Eve's flat tummy? Is it not more pleasing to the eye and refreshing on the palate, to pop into one's greedy mouth red strawberry after red strawberry, a fruit with such a short lifespan that it is disintegrated between one's tongue and the roof of the mouth, killed and dissolved in a heartbeat, leaving behind just the faintest sweet sigh?

The ladders, however, are still on the floor in the family room, conveniently placed so that we can all, in the penumbra of sunset, trip over them and break the occasional leg. Untouched.

Before one accuses me of dithering, procrastinating or - worse - waiting for Mr Vroom to hold the stiff contraption with me on it, I must point out that several misfortunes have watered down my enthusiasm for their use.

Firstly, close inspection of the tapestry's rod has revealed that I need to use rawplugs for the screws, instead of picture hooks. That, in turn, requires a drill to materialise in my dainty, delicate hands. Mr Husband's industrial-size monster is too heavy for me to lift, let alone carry with me on top of the wobbly ladder. Do you not find that the less a man is DIY-prone, the more expensive, professional tools he owns?

Secondly, I suppose Mr Husband is right when he says that you need two people for this little job: one to drill and one to hold the rod in place. My, this explanation is giving me the opportunity to indulge in all sorts of double-entendres...

Thirdly, I am afraid to report that I have just put myself out of order for a while: I bent over to get a bowl form the cupboard last night, and sneezed. I felt all the muscles in my lower back pull and contract painfully. I have been in agony ever since.

Me, the gym-bunny, the fittest, most active woman I know. How on earth am I going to go about my daily life, until my back is returned to me? Climbing ladders is out of the question. And what about gardening, hoovering, body-pump and body-step classes, trampolining, and - most importantly, sex?

Last night I moaned about my dilemma to Mr Husband, who produced a foul-smelling cream and massaged the small of my back with it. It made virtually no difference, but what a relief to have a man in one's life who can attend to that sort of wife-maintenance without flinching! I even got a large, affectionate smack on my bottom for 'not being naughty'.

Well, I suppose my bottom is rather close to the small of my back, so that proximity must have been quite tempting.

Maybe borrowing ladders is not so much of an opportunity as a sore back. Things can always precipitate... I should be emailing back thanking him for thanking me for thanking him, and mention my little back problem; although, if Mr Vroom has not taken advantage of his ladders as an excuse to view my back from below, I doubt that needing a cream and a massage on it will bring him here.