Man enough

By Will Smith

One of the trickiest skills of modern life is putting a transparent screen-protector on an iPhone. I’ve got through an entire pack of four and still not been happy. An air bubble, a skew-whiff angle, a fingerprint, a covered-up speaker, all have incurred my wrath—and dented my marriage, as my wife tries to help but just gets in my light. So it is with some trepidation that I approach a DIY course featuring wallpapering. This is going to be one big iPhone cover.

On top of that I’ll be, apart from the instructor, the only man present. As the name suggests, Chix & Mortar is a course run solely for women. The reverse would seem odd: a men-only DIY course would be as unnecessary as a “No OAPs” sign at a One Direction concert. But despite the stereotype that chaps have an innate affinity with tools, where women would rather try on hats, no one in the function room of the Thistleworth tennis club in west London seems to be there for the sexual politics. Instead, when I ask why they’ve come, the main reason is rather practical: why pay someone to do something you can learn for yourself?