MY son is highly intelligent, a star student on his university course.

But there's one thing lacking in him and the majority of the male population - common sense.

Show me a man with his feet firmly on the ground and I'll show you 100 floating around on cloud nine.

Here's a couple of examples to think about. My son, who is 21 years old, has a microwave in his college digs because he is a culinary disaster. One day I went to visit him and he was eating cold beans on toast. Yes, cold beans.

And why? His microwave had blown up (an electrical fault, of course, and nothing to do with him using it to heat up his Chinese takeaway in a metal container) so he couldn't heat the beans up. He actually believed that the only way to heat them up was in the microwave!

So what do you use the hob for? What were pans invented for?

Then there's the time when I went away for the weekend and left my husband alone with the kids. I returned to be confronted with piles of dirty washing, a sink full of dirty dishes and the ironing board having a scrap with the vacuum cleaner.

His excuse was that he didn't know how to use the washing machine or the dishwasher (the sink didn't get a look-in), he couldn't fathom out how to put the ironing board up and the vacuum cleaner had one of the kids' toys stuck in it.

The kids looked like window dummies for a charity shop and the house looked like a squat, but the car was in perfect condition and his golf clubs resembled the crown jewels.

You see, the problem with men is that they think they're above menial household tasks. After all these years of women's liberation they still think men are the bread-winners and a women's lot is presentable kids, a clean house and a happy husband.

Well stop right there. Okay, so men have achieved great things in history - they took the first steps on the moon, they invented the car, the aeroplane, ships, the telephone, blah, blah, blah.

But there's no wonder. All the women were making them cups of coffee and providing them with three meals a day while they pondered on the combustion system.

The women were looking after their kids, washing their clothes and agreeing with them.

Come on blokes, get real. Without us you'd be naked, starving and wouldn't know what to wear in the morning.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.