WHEREVER she goes these days, my wife has her knockers. I am concerned that Mrs X may be having issues of low self-esteem. People she had expected to be nice to her somehow turn out to be anything but.

The reasons for her latest disgruntlement started a few months ago when Alasdair Allan, our MSP in the Western Isles, called in for a chat. She gave him a cup of tea and the obligatory custard cream.

Eagle-eyed, as I know to my cost, as she cleared away the crockery, she noticed the parliamentarian had not actually finished his cuppa. Why was that, she wondered loudly, after he had headed for the hills. Telling her it was not absolutely necessary for everyone to finish every cup of tea she made, I told her the fellow had had as much as he wanted.

Anyway, it wasn’t a good thing, I asserted, to press too much nourishment on these political types. They would just keep coming round – the last thing we wanted.

She must pull herself together and go into the kitchen and prepare her master’s supper like a good wife ought to, I ordered. I’m very good like that, you see. Selflessly, I will always come up with little tasks to take her mind off her own self-doubts. Except this time, she didn’t obey. She leapt for the fridge and sniffed the milk carton.

“This is off. Yeeaargh,” she yelled, with a shrill note of alarm.

Cow juice is not something we partake of much in this house nowadays and she had given the unwitting elected representative a good splash of the stinky, acidic gunge that had formed in the carton. It was well out of date. It was honking.

“That poor man. I have poisoned him. You’d better go and see if he is lying in the gutter between here and the SNP office,” she screamed, with a disturbing air of concern for a man she hardly knew, and which she rarely shows for her own husband.

Happily, Dr Allan survived her assassination attempt and has even bravely decided he is now just about well enough to fight another election. And it was his party who unexpectedly lifted her spirits the other day by sending her a personally-addressed election communication.

Despite her name on it, it wasn’t exactly a personal letter, of course – a leaflet with lots of yellow colours stuffed into a window envelope. Bedraggled and weary till then, my beloved squealed with joy that it wasn’t a bill and at least that very decent chap Alasdair Allan cared about her enough to drop her a wee line.

It did cross my mind that there must be around 20,000 adults on the islands’ voters’ roll and that most of them would get exactly the same letter. Then again, best not, eh? Didn’t want any more thundering, black moods.

She held up the brown envelope as if it was some kind of prize trophy for winning a popularity contest.

“Aw look, he’s even put some words on the front just for me. He’s forgiven me for almost poisoning him. What a really nice man that Alasdair Allan is.”

Then she noticed the words under “Mrs Maciver”.

They read “because Scotland deserves better”.

Well, she hit the proverbial roof. I tried to explain the previously “nice” Dr Allan was only suggesting the SNP would run Scotland better than, well, the other lot. That didn’t work, either. As the SNP has been the Scottish Government for the last four years, she wanted to know what he meant by Scotland deserves better? Better than the current incumbent? The SNP? Hmm, she had a point, I suppose. You can take it both ways.

That was more than a week ago and she still hasn’t calmed down. Which, I’m afraid, is why I had to cancel Mother’s Day yesterday.

Oh, I didn’t forget to buy her something. A lovely brooch was what I chose. Wasn’t that nice of me? I thought so, too. However, I decided not to present her with it. What would happen if she happened to be wearing the brooch as she spotted Alasdair Allan canvassing up New Street?

Imagine the headline – “SNP hopeful stabbed as mystery woman screams she should have poisoned him when she had the chance”.

That box of marshmallows from the filling station is probably the safest gift, if she does remember.

You have to feel sorry for my other half, though. She has been taking possibly-unintended insults from my side of the family from way back. Just after we got engaged, I decided to take her to visit my Aunt Margaret in Glasgow.

Margaret was in her 80s, having spent her life “in service” for various doctors and other well-to-do figures in the city known as the dear green place.

After getting off the bus near her flat, I excused myself and popped into the local delicatessen and, as I often did, bought something to have with a cup of tea.

My new fiancee wondered what I was going to get.

I told her not to worry as I knew what would go down well with my father’s sister. It wasn’t difficult to choose something because, as Margaret always reminded me, she was keen on anything which had apples.

Up the stairs to the first floor we went. I chapped the door marked “M. Maciver”.

Aunt Margaret opened it with a broad smile, so I introduced Mrs X – I mean Miss X – and handed over the bag from the deli.

Then, and I tell you not a word of a lie, my dear auntie shook the hand of the shy maiden who was soon to become my wife and uttered the immortal words that almost ended our engagement there and then.

She said: “It’s very nice to meet you, my dear.

“Shall I tell you a secret about my nephew Iain?

“Whenever he comes to see me, he always brings a tart.”