As I popped a shepherd’s pie in the oven and set about laying the table, the cooker suddenly blew.
‘Oh no,’ I cried, wondering what on earth I’d rustle up for tea.
‘I’d better call an electrician out,’ I sighed to my husband, Craig, 50.
‘No, don’t do that,’ he said, as he fetched his toolbox. ‘I can fix it for you.’
Craig had never been interested in DIY.
‘You’ll save the day,’ I smiled, as our two children – Curt and Craig Junior – groaned that they were hungry.
‘What are husbands for?’ Craig grinned, giving me a cheeky wink.
As he fiddled about with the electrics, I got on with the rest of my housework in the room next door.
But I nearly jumped out of my skin when the smoke alarm started blaring.
‘What have you done?’ I cried, rushing into the kitchen and caught sight of Craig covered in black soot.
Craig had completely blown up the oven.
‘I should never have let you touch it,’ I sighed.
Throughout our 24 year-marriage, Craig had proven that he was rather clumsy.
From cutting open the sofa and leaving all the foam to spill out when he was trying to cut away the tight plastic wrapping, to redecorating our bedroom a bright pink colour instead of a subtle pastel pink because he mixed the two paints together – Craig had had his fair share of mishaps.
One one occasion, I nipped into McDonald’s – leaving Craig and our young sons in the car.
‘I’m just going to pop to the loo,’ I said.
But I came out of the toilets to screaming customers and staff – gathered around a vehicle outside – that I suddenly recognised was mine.
Craig had managed to crash our Ford Sierra into the front of McDonald’s – despite not being able to drive.
He’d left a gaping hole in the wall after he had tried to change the radio station and knocked the handbrake off – causing the car to jolt forwards.
He had me tearing my hair out, but I loved him – flaws and all.
When the electrician finally came out to take a look at our broken oven, he asked: ‘Why is the red cable in the green socket and the green cable in the blue socket?’
Craig didn’t understand what he was talking about, as he thought all the colours were the same and he just had to rework the wires.
From that moment on, I realised that Craig must have been colour blind, as there was no reason for him to mess up that much when it was a pretty straight-forward task.
There were times I started to doubt whether I could survive his recklessness during our relationship.
I was washing Craig Junior in the bath one day, when his dad came in to keep us company, propping himself up against the sink.
As I heard a loud crash behind me, I turned around to see our sink on the floor and water spewing out all over the bathroom.
Craig was standing in the corner of the bathroom shaken, as he didn’t realise that the sink wouldn’t be able to hold his weight.
‘What are you like?’ I cried, rolling my eyes and dialling for an emergency plumber.
I wanted to paint our bedroom a different colour, so suggested painting it a light pink colour, so Craig and myself bought one pot of pink and one pot of cream.
I had read online that you could mix a drop of the pink paint in with the cream, to get the colour that I wanted, so began looking at painter and decorators to hire to do it for us.
‘Are you joking? £50 an hour just to slap some paint on a wall when I can do it for free?’ Craig said shocked.
‘You can’t do it – you’ll mess it up,’ I told him.
But Craig insisted that he would do the job properly, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Only a few hours later, I heard him call my name, asking me to come upstairs.
I nearly fainted as I walked into our bedroom and saw that he had painted our walls the colour of bright pink flamingos.
‘What on earth have you done?’ I screamed in horror.
‘I know, it’s not great and I got paint on our bed, so I tried to get it off,’ he said with a nervous tone.
I looked at our bed, that had a material cover, which had now been turned into shreds, as Craig had scrubbed at the paint with a metal scourer.
It took me a while to calm down and although I asked Craig to fix it, he only ended up messing up our bedroom even more and I lost the strength to get it sorted.
There were times getting a divorce felt like the best option – as I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
But in order to save our marriage, I told myself that I had to stop Craig from doing any odds jobs, as he just couldn’t be trusted.
I thought him helping out around the house wouldn’t be an issue though.
I was out at work when our freezer packed up and I received a call from Craig whining down the phone, asking what to do.
I told him that he would need to defrost it before we got a new one and set him to work.
However, when I returned that night, the whole house had a funny smell, like burning plastic and as I entered the kitchen, there was a pool of melted plastic covering the floor and smoke flying out the windows.
I screamed for Craig to come have a look at what he had done, but he didn’t understand what had gone so wrong.
‘Well you said you wanted it done by the time you got home from work, so I placed a two-bar electric fire inside, thinking that it would melt all the ice and defrost it quicker,’ he said without an inkling about how silly that sounded.
I was about to fly into a fit of rage, but after looking at Craig’s dumbstruck face, I knew that he meant well and was only trying to help.
There was another time a few months later, when my car needed the oil topping up and I was in a desperate rush to get to work, so Craig offered to help me.
I was apprehensive about letting him get near my car, but I didn’t have any other choice if I wanted to make my shift in time, so I prayed that he would do the job properly.
I set off on my way to my job as a catering assistant, when thick black smoke started pouring out of the bonnet.
As I got out to have a look, the engine blew up.
Craig had accidentally spilled oil in every nook and cranny of the car’s system.
I was furious – I even had to take the day off to get my car to a garage so that it could be fixed.
In the end, the mechanic told me the oil had ruined the whole engine and the vehicle had to be completely written off.
I’ve forked out an arm and a leg – spending around £5,000 on Craig’s mishaps – in the past 24 years and I’m scared that I’ll soon go bankrupt if he doesn’t stop!
From taking apart the hoover, with no idea how to put it back together, leaving dust all over the floor, to taking apart out the washing machine when it needed replacing and water flooding out, ruining our utility room, Craig seriously has an issue with making a pigs ear of things.
Although a few weeks ago, he tested my patience once again, by insisting on wallpapering our bedroom wall, but he failed to line the flowery pattern up, so we were left with a mismatched imagine of pink flowers all across our wall.
Craig could tell that I was upset with the horrific job that he had done, so offered to take me away for the weekend to Blackpool.
I was touched by his gesture, but as we arrived, he realised that he had booked the return tickets for same day, so we had to rush about so we could catch our train home that evening – it was such a disaster.
By now Craig has certainly earned his stripes as ‘Britain’s clumsiest husband’.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Craig and marriage, it’s that they’re not going to be perfect and sometimes you might think about walking away from it all for an easier life.
But the clumsy mistakes that he makes, is what makes Craig Craig and I wouldn’t change a thing about my imperfect husband.