Published at 09:38, Friday, 05 February 2010

IT seems that everyone you speak to these days has a degree.

Young people of relatively limited intellect seem to have no problems in being accepted into temples of higher learning, running up a lifetime of crippling debt while studying the finer points of shelf stacking, what makes a really good round of toast or exploring why Hitler wasn’t such a bad bloke after all.

At the risk of further upsetting my many acquaintances in the academic world, I have to say I don’t believe in education for education’s sake.

If you are a dullard, spending three expensive years at university are unlikely to add anything worthwhile to the grey matter that a dozen years at school could not put there.

The Courant regularly receives letters from graduates anxious for work experience, to enable them to put their feet on the first rungs of the ladder that is a career in journalism.

They seem genuinely nonplussed when we write back and gently suggest that if they wish to write for a living, they should perhaps have a second look at their letters of application, and eradicate the spelling and grammatical mistakes.

I never went to university, but I perhaps would have done had there been courses in What Men Can’t Do That Women Can Do While Standing On Their Heads.

There would be more than enough modules to occupy three years of hard graft, starting with how to read the Courant, watch a particularly convoluted episode of EastEnders, and conduct an animated conversion with a friend on the telephone all at the same time – and still tell your husband to stop picking his toenails in the living room.

More advanced students could then move on to the Suppression of the Gag Reflex diploma, which enables women to change babies’ nappies, scoop up puppy poo and mop up vomit without the uncontrollable heaving and cold sweats produced by the male of the species in similar circumstances.

Then there is the Hearing Honing module, which enables women to detect the surreptitious opening of a tin of Quality Street from upstairs, through two closed doors.

However, the first class honours degree would have to be in Cling Film and Tinfoil Management.

Mrs Hextol has a doctorate in both disciplines, and cannot understand why I find both media as tricky to handle as ectoplasm.

Should sandwiches require happing up for a picnic, Mrs Hextol can use an A4 sized strip of foil to secure and keep fresh enough sandwiches for a family of four, with a spare one for the dog, and the whole thing looks as though it was moulded in aluminium.

If I am off on a fishing trip, and have to wrap my two rounds of Spam, beetroot and Kingsmill, and a pork pie, I use yards and yards of the stuff, and still cannot prevent seepage of red vinegar turning my growler into a encarmined nightmare.

She uses slightly more to encase the Christmas turkey, but it still goes into the oven as smart as a silver guardsman.

I am hopelessly addicted to the crispy bacon she uses to decorate the bird’s breast, so every year, I try to delicately infiltrate the outer wrapping to reap the streaky harvest.

No matter how gently I do it, I can never get the tinfoil back to its former pristine state, and am invariably caught greasy handed.

Even getting the stuff out of the packet is a trial.

Mrs Hextol needs only a quick clean and jerk to produce a shimmering sheet of silver – I cut my thumb on the jaggedy serrated edge in producing a crumpled mass which looks as though it has already been used to wrap up several Great North Runners.

Cling film is even more problematic.

As well as wrapping sandwiches when there is not enough tinfoil, Mrs Hextol uses it to cover things like trifles, ostensibly to keep them fresh, but in reality, to stop me sticking a finger into the cream.

Again using only a tiny fragment, she smooths and tugs, and somehow makes the cling film as tight and as impermeable as the skin on a snare drum.

The surplus cling film sticks to the side of the dish like a Cape Horn limpet.

I have tried and tried to get a similar snug fit, but my cling film droops and sags like Shadrach Dingle’s long johns.

And, no matter how I try to stretch it, there never seems to be enough to cover that which is wrapped.

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk