I'd rather be a Journalist than an Engineer

In the days when the establishment was easily rocked by the barbed comments of satirists, the late and much lamented Peter Cook was always someone I particularly enjoyed.

As I struggled manfully to assemble a simple shoe cupboard yesterday, I thought of his wonderful monologue by the character he created, EL Wisty. Mr Wisty bemoaned the fact that he would much have preferred to have been a judge than a miner.

I retrieved the assembly instructions from the bin this morning, to demonstrate why I think I was right to choose journalism as my lifetime career, rather than following in the footsteps of my father, who was an engineer.

These wordless instructions led me, first of all, to assemble the two sides the wrong way around. Then, I somehow managed to insert the piece marked with an arrow in the wrong place.

A job that might have taken any competent DIYer little more than 10 minutes managed to take over an hour. Those handles on the cabinet doors started to take on the form of an accusing grin.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Not in this case, it didn't.