He might be a stay-at-home husband, but no one wants a self-maid man The main problem is housework. Now, now, calm down dears! It's not that you chaps are bad at it; quite the reverse. But you are good at it in a very bad way. In my experience, men tend to go a bit tiresomely OCD whenever they finally (alleluia!) get round to chores. For instance, my single-minded husband will take a scrupulous two hours to do the washing up, which I can rattle through in a matter of minutes while singing nursery rhymes and making French toast. Admittedly, all three tasks will be executed with a slapdash lack of care, but they will be executed quickly and, given I don't intend to perform open-heart surgery on the worktop using a sterilised fish slice, what's the difference? Men have little idea what women want at the best of times, and are resigned to the fact that no matter what they do, they Always Get It Wrong, as in What the hell do you mean you've got us tickets for the cinema/opera/a romantic weekend in Rome? This accounts for their default state of insensate torpor, because at least if they do nothing, then they have some inkling of why their lawfully wedded termagant is yelling at them again. The average man will, if put in charge of the house and the children, misguidedly strive for perfection (wrong!), carefully prioritise (also wrong!) and point out, quite reasonably, that he simply didn't have time to do everything (wrong, wrong, so wrong!). So I think for the sake of my marriage I'll pass on the meticulous man about the house. What I really need is a multi-tasking missus. Spiced nut salad with everything Olympic gentrification fever has London's East End in its clammy grip and just (ngrnngggh!) won't let go, no matter how much we tug. The latest victim is our local park, which has been given a £9 million facelift, in the course of which the lovely cheap'n"cheerful cafe catering for ravenous children has been transformed into a genteel whited sepulchre more suited to Blenheim Palace. "Chips, please," my friend Suzi ordered. "Chips?" repeated the waitress, picking the word up with a pair of tongs. We don't serve [cue tiny consumptive cough for dramatic effect] ... chips. We promote healthy eating; perhaps your five-year-old would like to try the cumin, roast carrot, couscous and spiced nut salad? I think I shall draw a veil over the ensuing conversation there and simply refer you to the pointed sighing of the beau monde three-wheeled buggy brigade who were queuing behind us and disdainfully tutting. Until that is, they reached the counter. Chocolate cake, please. We don't have chocolate cake. But we do have beetroot cake. Perhaps your screaming twins would... This exchange, too, is best left to your imagination. Apparently, by way of a concession, the café does serve beans on toast - or rather a chi-chi ramekin of beans with two slices of unbuttered toast enigmatically balanced on top. Words fail me (apart from salty ones). It has been revealed that the French Olympic squad will be bringing over their own chefs as they, quite wisely, want to avoid British food every bit as much as the British. They'll be cooking 2,000 portions of Vendée canard a day as well as necking back 15,000 bottles of champagne to celebrate medal victories. And will probably get the frites of their lives when Hackney's ravenous rosbifs descend on them for supper. Taking a Twitter tip from me means never having to tweet you're sorry Dear Lord, please don't let me near one of Tom Stoppard's infernal Twitter Machines. Being of an excitable nature, I am not to be trusted with instant messaging any more than instant Scratchcards or Instant Whip. I am probably the only person in the land who sympathises with the lawyer who tweeted "Let the whoring recommence" during a trial this week because, frankly, I have enough traumas over emails fired off when I'm fired up and texts misconstrued after being sent from pubs late at night without agonising over indiscretions shared with all nine of my loyal followers. You see, like a smoker-turned-anti-tobacco zealot, I have a Twitter account. I set it up several years ago, but almost immediateIy foreswore it. Not because it was banal or narcissistic, but because I knew in my very marrow that self-annihilation was a mere 140 characters away.