I cut and nail the moulding for my skirting boards. I cook my own food, which beats the daylights out of the thin satisfaction of "ordering well" in restaurants or the fleeting relief of not having crucified your ready-meal in the microwave. I treasure good tools, which are super-possessions: the means through which so much of the physical world can be claimed.

The alternative is to accede to the helpless eternal childhood — the dispossession — that is modern life. We may be living in the information age, but young people are no longer provided with the information they need to manipulate their own environment. Theoretically educated but mechanically inept, they're not taught how to work a jigsaw without snapping the blade, or even how to paint — only how to hire someone else, whose know-how is increasingly rare. Little wonder that the trades are now more reliable routes to higher incomes than degrees in media studies.