‘How's yours?' I ask my friend Wendy, as we compare notes over a coffee.

‘OK. Except for this.' She lifts a corner of her blouse to show me a small but vicious burn on her stomach.

‘It happened again?' I say, incredulous.

‘Yes. Just like last time. Everything had been fine. It was a normal Sunday evening. Suddenly, from nowhere, this awful eruption.'

They're strong, masterful and capable of inflicting pain and pleasure in equal measure.

Our husbands wouldn't dream of treating us the way our irons do. They'd end up in court if they did.

Our irons, though, have no such qualms.

My first did things the manufacturers swore were an impossibility. Its favourite trick was to loosen the supposedly unlockable lock that guarded the tank and then, suddenly, spit gusts of boiling water over me and as many of the children as possible.

Foiled, it then worked loose the nuts securing the base plate in the hopes of electrocuting me.

Wendy's - her third - has inflicted three burns on her and scalded her twice.

And, even when not actively engaged in turning its sado-masochistic fantasies into reality, a steam iron has one more favourite game.

It performs perfectly as you work through the clothes that don't matter: the old rags that are ironed only to make them sufficiently compact for the children to stuff them into the cracks and crevices in their rooms not already filled with lolly sticks and fruit fly corpses.

Then, as you iron the one essential garment - new, white, pristine, irreplaceable and required for an important and imminent meeting - it emits a hiss of satisfaction and smears brown fingers of concentrated limescale all down the front.

And forget that guff about treating it with calcium remover. Mine's so dosed up on the stuff it's signed up with Calgon Users Anonymous.

But what worries me isn't our irons' behaviour. It's the way Wendy and I react, laughing weakly and treating their lethal flaws as endearing eccentricities.

So a month ago we sat down and agreed new rules.

1. Iron ownership is not like being in a co-dependent relationship. It just feels that way.

2. Needing our irons is one thing. Pathetic gratitude when they tackle three sheets on the trot without burning us is quite another. Demeaning, too.

3. Irons that don't work properly should be repaired, not appeased.

Wendy, however, is in deep. Now, she's taken up the bassoon, an instrument that compensates for having only one Mozart concerto to its name with record-breaking homicidal tendencies.  

‘Look at this,' she said on my last visit, pointing to a nasty looking cut on her lip. ‘It's from the wire you wind round the reed you blow into. It came loose and bit me.'

‘And the steam iron?' I say. ‘It blew up,' she said, then brightened.

‘The new one's in its box, just over there. It's a different manufacturer this time. They've even given me a three year guarantee. But......' she gestures to the ironing basket. ‘I have bought a brand new white shirt for that vital interview with my daughter's headteacher tomorrow.'

From the steam iron's box, I swear I can hear a faint hissing, followed by a small, cruel laugh of satisfaction.