Genius turns pain into pleasure

Those who walk among us blessed with the superpower of being able to fix things truly are God’s chosen few.

Last week our dishwasher and tumble dryer were on the blink (yeah, First World problems), warning lights flashing, alarms going off, coffee mugs coming out dirtier than they went in and the dryer cutting out every five minutes.

The Germans have a special word for the damage I can do with a screwdriver - verschlimmbesserung - which roughly translates as clumsily making something far worse during a doomed attempt to make it better.

Previous triumphs include... putting up smoke alarms with Blu Tack and spending Easter weekend in hospital with concussion after getting stuck in the long, thin cardboard box our loft ladder arrived in, arms pinned to my side and timber-ing like a mighty Scots pine.

See, it’s not worth the bother. The boss, on the other hand, sees every malfunctioning domestic appliance as a personal affront.

She cleaned the filters, mucked out the pipes, put special salt in the special salt compartment (who knew?) and scraped four years of fluff out of the dryer - all without electrocuting herself or setting the house on fire.

As well as all that, she’s even great at picking presents. For Christmas, she bought me an actual bed of nails.

Marketed as a Shakti mat, it’s the size of a hand towel with hundreds of sharp spikes made out of hard plastic, designed to increase blood flow to the affected area to aid healing.

If you’ve got little kids you already know how it feels, like stepping on Lego in stocking feet. After two minutes of agony, I thought, “If she hates me this much, why doesn’t she just ask for a divorce?”

Thing is, after lying on it for five minutes, it feels like warm sunshine.

And after 20 minutes your blood’s pumping faster than a hummingbird’s wing and your back doesn’t seem to hurt quite as much as it did.

No pain no gain.