I suppose it serves me right for all that wittering in last week's column about not being able to find a comfortable pair of shoes for Royal Ascot.

Because, as it turned out, feet were the last thing I had to worry about on my big day out.

The trouble started last Wednesday when we got home to find the overflow pipe gushing water from the side of the house.

When things like that happen my first inclination, as a DIY dunderhead, is to reach for the Yellow Pages and hope to find the section listed "Devout Christian Tradesmen."

My Other Half, by contrast, is made of sterner stuff and likes to take on such domestic challenges himself.

I am normally uneasy about this, because I prefer my house's structurally sound; but even I have mended a toilet cistern once, in my student days, and the loft tank seemed to operate on much the same principle.

Anyway, the O H shinned up into the attic and, apart from one worrying remark about a beam moving when he leant on it, all was apparently well.

The water stopped coming out of the pipe, the ceiling did not collapse, and we got on with the rest of our evening. It wasn't until the next day dawned and I started getting ready for Ascot that we realised all was not well.

The O H took a shower and walked back into the bedroom, shivering, which I thought was odd for a midsummer morning.

"Were you planning on taking a bath?" he asked.

An hour later, when no amount of fiddling with red valve 'A' and revolving flange 'C' had succeeded in restoring our hot water supply, I started boiling pans, feeling helpless and enraged at the fact that our mod cons had dared be so inconvenient.

I wouldn't dream of comparing last week's mishap to anything like the disaster that's hit the poor flood-stricken people of Helmsley and Thirsk this week; but my reaction to a minor domestic trauma made me realise how mollycoddled I've become, with my centrally-heated home and my air-conditioned office.

Things were a bit different during my childhood in the Seventies. We didn't have a tin bath like Old Man Steptoe here, but for whatever reason (the fuel crisis? the 90-day freeze?) I remember boiling a lot of pans back then - by candlelight, if we were lucky.

We didn't have a tin bath or an outside privvy, although my grandma certainly did. The latter was shared with three neighbours and was well-stocked with old newspapers and Izal 'Now Wash Your Hands' loo paper. Torch-lit trips down the back yard after dark were the highlight of many a trip to gran's house; they were somehow much more exciting than eating John West salmon salad followed by Del Monte cling peaches and Carnation milk in pink, cut-glass bowls.

The house I grew up in had heating only in the front room, so there were frost patterns on my bedroom window-pane and winter mornings were spent rolling up newspapers and twisting them into knots for dad to get a fire going in the grate.

Eeh, I don't know. Tell that to the young people of today, and they won't believe you. My feet were fine at Ascot, by the way. Marks & Spencer may be an ailing giant but they can still turn out a smart, pink, leather, kitten-heeled court shoe that doesn't crucify you before the last race.

Updated: 10:57 Wednesday, June 22, 2005