IT never ceases to amaze me that, even after 26 years of marriage, I’m still discovering things about my wife and our relationship that I didn’t know.

Take the other night, for example. We'd come in from a nice night at the theatre and, being the thoughtful husband that I am, I offered to make us egg and chips.

“You go and get your pyjamas on, sit in front of the telly, and I’ll have it ready in half an hour,” I told her. See what I mean? Thoughtful.

There were ten minutes to go on the oven-timer so I popped my head round the door to interrupt a recording of the X Factor with a further display of thoughtfulness.

“Would you like some bread with your egg and chips?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’ll do it myself,” she replied, waving the TV remote, dismissively.

I admit to being a little taken aback by this rejection. “Er, why?” I enquired.

“Because I don’t like the way you do bread,” she said, matter-of-factly.

I allowed this revelation to sink in for a few moments and then I challenged it.

“You don’t like the way I do bread?

What do you mean – you don’t like the way I do bread? What is it about the way I do bread that you don’t like?”

“You don’t do it properly,” came the response.

Well, I couldn’t help but consider how many ways there are to “do bread”. You take a slice out of the packet, butter it, cut it in half, and put it on a plate. What else is there to “do” with bread?

Maybe I’m supposed to toss it in the air a few times before buttering? Or cut it in imaginative shapes? Or melt the butter a little under a scented candle?

I just couldn’t let it go. “Sorry, but why don’t I do bread properly?” I asked.

“You don’t spread the butter evenly,” she said. “You have butter around the middle but you don’t have it out to the sides.”

Again, I was allowing this to permeate my brain when my youngest son, 17, joined in the bread attack: “Yeah, Dad, it’s true – you definitely don’t do bread well.”

In fact, he went a stage further. Not only did he criticise my butter-spreading ability but he also claimed I cut the bread “funny”.

“You once gave me and my friends some bread and they thought it was hilarious,” he added. “It was all in scraps – your technique is all wrong.”

So, there we have it. After 26 years of marriage, during which time I’ve been a loving, thoughtful husband, and raised four healthy children, I have been branded a bread failure.

It has made me wonder where else my technique might be lacking...but I don’t like thinking about it too much.

The hurt was starting to subside when my daughter arrived home from London for the weekend.

“Do you want egg and chips? I asked.

“Yes please,” she shouted back. “But I’ll do my own bread.”

THE THINGS THEY SAY

HALLOWEEN night brought several young trick or treaters to our door and I was ready with some admittedly cheap bags of sweets. One young lad, dressed as a skeleton, looked at his treat and said: “Is that all you’ve got?”

MEANWHILE, Harvey Westcott, aged eight, of Middlesbrough, has discovered Michael Jackson but perhaps needs to brush up on his song titles. According to dad, Matt, the lyrics to Thriller have become a little confused. He’s been walking around the house singing: “It’s a gorilla.”