I am a new man this week. In the long twilight struggle to rescue the last vestiges of my credibility as a husband and father I am freshly armed with a most potent, perhaps life-altering, weapon.

For years I have had to endure the whips and scorns of a wife and five daughters who have come to regard the only man in the house as living proof that the modern male is a superfluity. When it comes to anything that requires even the most mundane demonstration of household technical prowess, I am, to put it in the most contemptuous terms of my American daughters, a loser.

Unlike my father, who could, given time, fix just about anything around the house, who rose to the challenge of a broken appliance with courage and patience, I’m essentially incapable in this most critical of male activities. I’m the kind of man who labours for hours over the open cisterns of lavatories trying to figure out how exactly the ballcock works. I can always be guaranteed to assemble a critical piece of furniture the wrong way, such that the error is discoverable only right at the very end of the assembly process and the entire project must be started from scratch. When one of my children approaches me for help with a flat tyre or a dodgy iPod, I can actually hear the dull tone of resignation and low expectations in the voice, the product of a thousand such prior fruitless requests for help.

All the time, these pathetic little tableaux of domestic incompetence are played out to the soundtrack of a rhythmic tut-tutting from a wife who long ago demonstrated to any reasonable person the utter futility of my existence.

But no more. I’ve a distinctly male swagger this week. I’d swear my voice is half an octave lower; if the mood persists I might even go out and buy myself a pair of overalls. The reason for my new found self-confidence is that I have discovered power cycling.

If it sounds technical, that is just as it should be. It does not involve bicycles. It is a way of fixing computers and, perhaps, I’m told, other electronic items. It is, let’s be honest, man’s work.

To the uninitiated it might even imply a hint of danger.

You can imagine when James Bond finally gets his hands on the ticking bomb, the awestruck, terrified, helpless female gasping: “I don’t believe it. He’s going to power-cycle it!”

It’s probably simplest if I tell you exactly how it changed my life.

The other night my 12-year-old daughter gloomily broke off from e-mailing her friends on the computer to tell me that the internet wasn’t working. As she did, I could see she was mentally preparing for a long haul, a few desultory efforts on my part involving some key strokes that would result, as it always does, in a phone call to the cable company, and, in another few days, the arrival of a real man with a screw-driver and a tool belt.

But as it happened, a male friend told me that very night over dinner that a lot of computer problems could be solved by “power cycling” a modem. Here, from start to finish, he explained, in a conspiratorial whisper, is how you do it: You turn off the computer, unplug the modem, sit around for a few minutes, plug it back in and turn it on.

It sounded like a joke, and I made sure no one was around as I tried it on the unresponsive computer in case I’d been had.

But within a few minutes the thing was up and humming. When my daughter returned I could sense that our relationship had changed. She had badly underestimated me. I was a technical genius.

It was proof in fact of the essential genius of computers. For years I’ve had doubts about this. Ever since they were invented, computers have been just another source of male humiliation for me. My general household ineptitude has been embarrassing enough, but at least there was always something honourably manly about the people who came to fix the plumbing and rewire the house. You could actually look with admiration on the kind of workers who had such traditional technical skills. But people who are generally associated with an ability to fix computers are, let’s be honest, weird. Manly doesn’t come into it. Reedy, geeky, sneering, snivelling sorts, IT repair people have been regarded as despicable.

I look at them in a new light now. Since I’ve mastered the most basic science of fixing a computer, I think they need to be taken more seriously. In fact it’s obvious that computers provide a vital lifeline for men everywhere back to their lost virility.

I’m excited now. I’m actually looking forward to the next time the internet goes down — between you and me, I might even engineer it myself. I know my daughters, and perhaps even my wife, will finally need me for something. “Don’t worry, darling,” I’ll say, comfortingly, “I’ll probably have to power-cycle it.”

Then, when the job is done, I’ll look modestly at my children. Our Daddy, their expressions will say in silent awe. Power cyclist. And then, for a magical, fleeting moment, I’ll be a man again. Until someone asks me to go and fix the lavatory.

From our sponsor summa cum laude

As you watch the Boat Race this weekend, spare a thought, and perhaps a small donation, for our cash-strapped ancient universities. Things are clearly desperate.

A friend of mine, an Oxford alumnus, was recently invited to lunch by the head of his old college. Knowing what was coming, he duly packed his chequebook. Having dispensed with that part of the discussion, the principal then moved on. Perhaps his guest would consider doing tutorials, at a rate of, say, £50 an hour?

Now, my friend is a distinguished journalist. So he said, well, yes, maybe he could spare a few hours a week to pass on some of his accumulated wisdom to undergraduates.

No, no, no, the head of the college quickly interjected. He didn’t want him to teach, but to sponsor tutorials given by Fellows of the college. My friend politely declined, so he never learnt exactly what they had in mind.

Perhaps the idea was that the tutor and the student would wear baseball caps with the donor’s insignia for the duration of the tutorial? Or maybe the tutor would begin each session with a statement from his sponsor. “This educational experience is brought to you in part by the kind generosity of Fred Smith.” Better still, maybe college choristers could be on hand at the start of each tutorial with a customised jingle?

“Oh we can learn about Catullus and Horace and Lucan But if it hadn’t been for Baker we’d be studying in Luton.”

And why stop at alumni? There must be many wealthy celebrities who did not have the benefit of an Oxford education who would be thrilled to add their name to one of the world’s grandest educational institutions.

What pop star’s heart wouldn’t swell with pride at the thought that in some Gothic pile bleary-eyed students were benefiting from the Mariah Carey Epistemology Hour?

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