Linda Kennedy: This tool has set the cause of women's lib back light years

Published on Wednesday 26 November 2008 18:39

A BLACK hole in national finances is forecast. Fantastic. Alistair Darling's critics have given women an opportunity to reveal that those great voids in space may henceforth be known as Black & Decker Holes.

Well, that's what I'm hoping, and have been since that astronaut-ess dropped the toolbag. You know the one. She was doing DIY on the International Space Station when she had a clumsy moment and the tools drifted towards the bloke-o-sphere of Mars.

I wasn't chuffed. Many men decided to have a little holiday on Planet Wit, taking the long route over the moon. "Can't trust a woman with tools, eh? What was the problem? Freeze-dried butter fingers?" That female astronaut couldn't have caused more damage to my gender's reputation for technical competence had she been unable to reverse-park the shuttle into a crater. Ever since, I've been doing damage limitation.

I hoped we could pretend it was on purpose, to present the first example of space rhyming slang. OK, she greeted the loss of the toolbag with the words 'oh great' – which is less imaginative than the route the Earth takes round the sun – but under her breath couldn't we make out she said: "That's put a spanner in the Captain Kirks"? Captain Kirks > works.

Next I wondered if we could maintain everything had happened exactly to plan. It wasn't a toolbag, it was the toolbar with everything required to create the galaxy-wide web, big sister to the worldwide web, and its safe delivery to "cyber space" would allow "url" addresses to one day to become "gww".

Then I resolved we should just come out fighting. "Orbiting tools will come in handy," we would say, "when everyone routinely goes on holiday to the moon and someone's spaceship breaks down."

Such explanations were met with guffaws from men I know. Indeed, attempts at defence heightened their glee, to the extent that I was thinking of launching Feminists in Space, as a support group, not a rocket. Then came the pre-budget report and its talk of economic black holes. Lo, the idea was born to maintain that the toolbag blunder was a promotion for a new sponsorship deal between NASA and Black & Decker. Black holes would receive corporate rebranding, forcing Darling's critics to update their rhetoric. People would read the paper, ask: "What's an economic Black & Decker Hole? Oh really? I see. Not clumsiness? A unique publicity event? How clever." They would tell their friends, thereby saving our gender from reputational ruin.

The key question: will blokes buy all this? Spending is their economic duty. So, fingers crossed, ladies. No, not you, astronaut woman. You keep a firm grip on whatever's to hand.

Gold, frankincense and latte

SAY what you like about the commercialisation of Christmas, but it's still about religion to some people. Like hundreds of Christmas shoppers this week, I was seeking respite from the trail. Into Pret a Manger for coffee I went. A man and his daughter, laden with latts, came and sat at the 5p-sized table alongside me. She picked up her mobile phone to inform the other members of the family where to find them. "We're in…" she looked round.

"Pret something," said her father.

They both looked at the branding on the side of their cups and saw a word they recognised, though not from a French class.

"Prt … in the manger," she said, pronouncing it like chez Jesus.

One shouldn't mocha, though one wants to. It certainly puts a new spin on the nativity story. Perhaps the three wise men followed the Starbucks of Bethlehem.

• THE catchphrase of Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman is verbally dancing into the most unexpected corners of life.

Len, head of spangles – perhaps the inspiration for the 1970s confectionery – famously produces one score paddle more than others.

Along with 20 other people, I was wheezing away at a weightlifting class this week. During the bicep track, repetitions were counted down by the instructor. Ten, nine, eight, SEVEN… Strictly has become a truly modern talking point, going from parish pump to Body Pump.