Women can network - just not David Cameron's way That's not to say we don't make connections when we need to; women can bond (and I mean bond for life) with each other in about as long as it takes to reapply mascara in the Ladies. A childbirth trauma disclosed, a lippy shared, a cutting sideswipe at a mutual frenemy and bingo! Men however, bond tectonically in an agonisingly slow process of exposure to one another's company, however stultifying that company might be. Because if a chap sees a chap about and that chap always laughs at a chap's jokes, well, he must be the right sort of chap, mustn't he? Oh, he's not here tonight? He's gone home to help put his children to bed? Well, that's a bit rum, not our sort of chap after all. It's hard to escape the suspicion that networking is just business jargon for drinking late with a bunch of people you secretly envy. What woman wouldn't rather be snuggling with the children, or having dinner with girlfriends - or just repainting her toenails in front of Strictly? Oh, all right then, Panorama. In his seminal 1936 work, How To Win Friends and Influence People, the original and arguably best self-help book, Dale Carnegie recommended that one of the fundamental techniques in handling people was to "arouse in the other person an eager want." Whenever I attempt, ham-fistedly, to network, the only arousal experienced is my own eager want to go home. Life is busy, I am busy. I can barely fit in the people who matter now, never mind the ones who might matter someday. But then again, I am not itching to enter the Cabinet, twitching to gain access to the Prime Minister and in so doing remind him that one of the reasons he's such a dud with women voters is because he spends too much time with his Gangnam Style toffs. In any other job it would be considered very weird, bordering on creepy, for a man in his forties to be handing out top jobs to his bezzie schoolmates like he was presiding over the college tuck shop. But politics is not like any other job. Dame Helen is due to take up the post of director-general of the National Trust, where presumably any networking will take place over a nice cream tea, at 4pm sharp. Maybe if that were the case in Westminster, a lot more women would do it. I'm never going to make Celebrity Bathrooms 'I'm doing up my bathroom. Ooh lovely! That must be fun. Well no actually, it is so beyond my skillset I am paralysed with a debilitating mixture of terror and indifference. I have no idea how to go about creating a serene haven of contemporary chic with a curved acrylic free-standing bath. Worse, I'm finding it hard to care, although I must because the plumber is coming on Monday. I did almost buy a magazine but when I thumbed through it and saw the dread phrase "Dare to Dream," I dropped it faster than a soap on a rope and fled. Having Googled Celebrity Bathrooms (yes, really), I know that Sarah Jessica Parker has beadboard wainscoting in her Hamptons retreat, and Meg Ryan has an antique earthenware tub at her beach house, but it's not proving particularly useful intel. Girlfriends are baffled I'm not more excited by the prospect of a sexy limestone washbowl, but to be honest, fixtures and fittings leave me so cold, I fear I may be - yes, interiorly frigid. Of course, my husband always suspected. When we first met, he thought it bit unwomanly that I didn't stockpile copies of Elle Deco in the loo, like all his previous girlfriends. Instead, I had a subscription to The Listener (RIP) which has proved to have been a frivolous waste of time, as I should have been mugging up on wall-mounted thermostatic mixers. It's too late for me, but by way of atonement, I shall ensure both my daughters are fit for purpose when they fly the nest and don't just know how to wire a plug - but how to choose one too. Of course my child is different Ofqual calls it cheating. Schools call it "teaching to the exam"." And I call it? Bonkers. What is the point of nannying, fiddling, pushing and pulling children, like recalcitrant donkeys, up to a C grade if they patently, blatantly, screamingly obviously, aren't up to it? Whom does it benefit? Not the child, who might be dim, but isn't stupid. Not the sixth form that discovers, belatedly, that a C is nothing more than a glorified G*. And not the state educational system, whose inadequacies at primary level most often create the conditions for failure at 15. To this end, parents urgently need to join the debate and demand more rigorous intervention much sooner. Flogging a struggling child to achieve a fraudulently inflated pass should be outlawed. Unless it's my child, of course. The lights are going out. . . For those of us who reside on Planet John Lewis, the fact Comet has crashed and burned might seem of little import. While the loss of jobs is always regrettable, just another empty unit in just another retail park, alongside the ghosts of JJB Sports and Clinton Cards won't have any impact in the Never Knowingly Undersold world, will it? Well yes, it will. The cumulative effect of previously twinkling but now dying stars in the high street firmament is crippling retailers and no one will emerged unscathed. Real traders are increasingly being undercut by virtual rivals, aided and abetted by savvy, cynical consumers who browse in person but buy online. Soon, instead of wooing us to buy their goods, shops will be nothing more than spartan showrooms. Gone the halogen-lit pleasure emporia, farewell the instant gratification of hunting and gathering and bringing home in bulging plastic carriers. Ironically, the click-of-a-mouse ease that has made cyber-shopping such a success, could deliver a death blow to retail therapy as we know it and bring us tumbling back down to earth with a (big) bang. I'm always generous to myself It's always nice to suddenly discover a new word or phrase for a hitherto unnamed concept or activity. Usually the word tends to be German as they have a peculiar flair for neologising, but in this instance the expression is gratifyingly home-grown. Self-gifting has been identified as the control-freak act of buying your own presents because your loved ones can't be trusted not to squander money and opportunity on tat. I'm a self-gifter; doesn't that have a deceptively serene, almost Buddhist ring to it? It sounds, in fact, like there should be workshops on it; maybe I'll set up a residential course in Kerala, combining self-gifting with yoga and head massage. So, you may ask, what's the difference between self-gifting and just buying yourself lots of stuff? Like any special something, it's all down to the way it's presented...