The Pre-Event DIY Intervention
In the Court of KJ, the plumbing and heating operate on a countdown clock.
He cannot leave a working system alone when a major occasion is coming up. If guests are due, or an important deadline was looming, KJ initiates an immediate engineering audit.
This happened every single Christmas Eve. While other families were wrapping presents and pouring drinks, KJ would enter a state of urgent focus and decide the central heating required “attention”. He would march into the kitchen, remove his green woolly jumper, and dismantle the boiler system. Standing there wearing only white shorts, glasses steaming up, he would huff heavy waves of Dishwasher Breath as he “improved” the infrastructure.
By Christmas morning, the heating system would inevitably break. The house would be freezing. We would sit around the tree in coats and scarves, using hairdryers under our blankets to stay warm.
KJ would stand in the kitchen, completely satisfied, drinking cold boxed red wine basking in his great work.
He applied the same approach to my mum’s education.
The night before her final Master’s exams, while she was locked away revising, KJ decided the kitchen ceiling required urgent attention. He dragged a ladder into the hallway and began “investigating” the pipework above her study.
Within minutes, the pipe split and water poured through the ceiling panels in a sudden flood, saturating the hallway and crashing into her revision space.
My mum was desperately trying to save her textbooks when she looked up to see KJ standing barefoot on the ladder in the middle of the deluge, completely calm.
Over the roar of the water, he launched his defence:
“I tell you what, the pipework is a mess. Stop complaining.”
He was entirely serious and fully convinced he had improved the system, rather than simultaneously destroying Christmas and a postgraduate degree.
2026 Jennifer Clair Robson AKA The Terrible Daughter. All rights reserved.