'Moving up one branch turned me from sawyer into a rescue mission'

I SEEM to spend a lot of time up ladders, in trees and on roofs for someone worried by - that's right, afraid of - heights. It's called acrophobia and means that above a certain height I freeze.

The problem is that this critical height can vary. Up to five feet above ground level, fine; above that, who knows when knuckles will whiten, knees lock and shoulders hunch? Certainly not me, with the result that moving up one branch of a tree has turned me from active sawyer into a rescue mission, retrieved by JCB telescopic extension.

The same thing happened climbing the outside ladder on a grain storage bin. Reaching the penultimate top step, no trouble. One step beyond? Hello below - JCB again, please.

I don't remember suffering from acrophobia, if I had known what it was called, as a youngster. Maybe the trees I climbed weren't as tall as I remember, while the corrugated iron roof ridges we used to inch along - we could complete a rooftop circuit of the farmyard unless detected and asked politely to desist - were relatively low.

Hell on shorts, boots and hands, but low and fun, although somehow they lost their attraction when we were old enough to be sent up there to wire-brush and paint. Perhaps that was when I should have suggested I had acrophobia. Then again, given the gritty ethos of those child-labour times, perhaps not.

So far - not that I'm superstitious, but touch wood - the height of the average domestic stepladder has not been a problem. That means acrophobia has not prevented me spending many happy hours stripping wallpaper, sanding, painting, hedge-cutting, ivy-clearing and pruning; with many more - touch wood again - to look forward to.

At one time that list also included wallpapering. I now admit some jobs are beyond my vast range of skills, but giving it up had nothing to do with fear of a stepladder.

No, our wallpapering days ended when Tom as a toddler, trying to help, trod in the paste bucket the same day that I ripped off a recalcitrant length of paper, rolled it into a ball, and kicked it across the room at my lovely assistant. Who, getting into the spirit of the thing, kicked it straight back. Since then we have left papering to the professionals.

It has been suggested that it is also time I left other stepladder jobs to professionals. Instead, ever alert for new challenges and determined to beat my fears, during what turned into an activity holiday in France recently I found myself and host Roger trowelling crépi - buckets of readymade plaster, nothing to do with work quality - onto the gable end of his rural idyll.

We did the upper reaches of this on a structure which met local health and safety rules - his - of a stepladder standing on boards supported by iron trestles resting on a platform of bricks, levelled here and there by slivers of tile.

As she watched me stretching for the last patch of gable apex, I asked Liz, who was showing concern: "Are you worried about my fear of heights, light of my life?"

"No, dear heart," she said, "I'm worried about your sanity."