I’m reliably useless at doing anything useful

I’m in awe of capable people. You know the type I mean. The sort of person who’ll blithely tell you they’ve just stained their deck – a feat they accomplished without any apparent deckstaining experience or veranda-related qualifications. Or those who can rustle up a meal for a dozen people without breaking a sweat. Let alone people who raise a family, hold down a job, pay their bills on time, plan and execute holidays, all while maintaining healthy relationships and maybe getting to the gym a couple of times a week.

Any one of those things seems impossibly daunting to me. To manage all at once seems superhuman, and yet many, if not most, people I know juggle most of those things, most of the time.

I had glandular fever in the fifth form, which took me out of school for about three months. I’ve wondered since whether it was into this period my school compressed all the life lessons that have eluded me since.

Is that where other students worked out how to use an Allen key (which, to reinforce my argument, I first spelled as Alan)? How to change a tyre? Since we didn’t have YouTube instruction videos back then, how the hell did everyone apart from me seem to know how to poach an egg? It all escapes me.

It’s not like I can point the finger at my parents, at least not squarely. It’s true neither Mum nor Dad are especially handy people, but they raised two other sons who manage not to be nearly as useless as me.

I haven’t asked them, but I’m pretty sure my brothers don’t get butterflies every time they fill a car with petrol out of an ineradicable fear that the awkwardness and uncertainty at doing so are visible to normal people.

Withdrawing money I’m not certain I have from an ATM triggers the same response, but it won’t ever compel me to look at the balance, let alone print off a receipt.

Most of the time, I’m able to get away with an almost total absence of basic skills. If anything is to blame, it’s that I’m perpetually single. I have nobody to rely on but me, and I’m notoriously unreliable.

This is not some elaborate preamble to a humble-brag. I can’t pretend I’m such a genius in some other respect that it excuses my uselessness. If I were a prolific novelist or neurosurgeon, I could be forgiven for not knowing my way around a hammer. But, to say the least, I’m not.

When you’re in early recovery, as I was a dozen or so years back (for alcohol), the old-timers tell the newly sober to hold off on contemplating a romantic partner until you’ve managed to keep a pet alive for 12 months, and not to get a pet until you’ve tried a pot-plant. Sage advice – although I’m not sure I could grow that either.

The other theory that could apply is yet another Alcoholics Anonymous trope – that psychosocial development is arrested at the point one begins to abuse. This would make more sense if I started problem drinking at 11.

Instead, I date my alcoholism to a particular day, at the age of 20 in a suburban Wellington pub, when I got drunk during the middle of the day for the first time. I can’t even begin to describe the feelings of wellbeing brought on by the realisation that there are no limits on boozing.

The ensuing 16 years were dedicated to testing that proposition. It’s really no excuse, though, since I’ve been sober almost as long, plenty of time for remediation.

How the hell did everyone apart from me seem to know how to poach an egg? It all escapes me.

Capabilities, I suspect, shrink or expand to fit circumstances. I’d like to think if I’d had children, for example, I could have kept them alive at least. Maybe, in this parallel universe of my imagining, I would be shepherding offspring hither and thither, from judo to rugby to sleepovers, all while effortlessly recognising street names and never having to shamefacedly reverse out of one-way streets.

Remembering to keep them fed and clothed must surely come with the territory of parenting. Never having to contend with a grizzly child that I couldn’t immediately return to a parent’s arms means I never developed those muscles, or have let them atrophy.

The rest of you should take a break from tidying up the garden or putting out the recycling to pat yourself on the back. What you do every day to keep your lives in order is no mean feat. This is especially true in light of the proliferation of streaming television options and the ready availability of sofas.

Kudos to you. And if I ever move into a place with a deck, expect a call.