CUPID is redundant. The chubby little baby-faced chap might as well hang up that bow and arrow right now and go off and get properly dressed. He's been replaced by a quiz and a computer.

In this week of all weeks, as we're surrounded by red roses, chocolate hearts and naughty knickers, the romance is going out of romance.

Instead of eyes across a crowded room followed by a great leap into the unknown together, we're getting the 165 question compatibility test. This is checked by a computer to see if couples really have a future together.

Well, that's really going to set your heart a-flutter, isn't it?

It's called a marital inventory, and the American who devised it said it gave couples "a full body X ray of their relationship". Yikes. So far, more than 1.5 million American couples have completed the inventories. And ten per cent of them have delayed or cancelled their weddings because of the findings.

So much for true love, the bolt from the blue, love at first sight.

Oh you can imagine it can't you. When Romeo looks up at that balcony... when Mr Darcy finally declares himself to Elizabeth Bennett.... when Tarzan swings through the jungle to snatch up Jane... instead of swooning rapturously the women will whip out their briefcases and say "Yes, fine, but just answer these 165 questions first, will you?"

Well, that's half our literature gone. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Now it will be Boy meets girl. Fills in form. The end.

No more weepy films, no more soppy love stories, no more sonnets of love and desire.

And who ever said compatibility is important? Do we really want to marry someone just like us? What happened to the idea that opposites attract?

And the great and glorious luck of Cupid's arrow, is that it often does hit the most unlikely people. Fearsome intellectuals with dizzy blondes, heiresses and lorry drivers, respectable middle aged women and exotic toy boys, high flying career women and stay-at-home husbands.

It is part of the joy and excitement and unpredictability of living. It is what adds the spice to life, the fun and excitement, the breath-taking heart-stopping moment of love from an unexpected quarter.

Still, I suppose the inventory might serve some purpose. If someone gives you those 165 questions to answer, you might realise that there are some divides too wide to bridge.

And go and find someone else.

NEARLY 70,000 people a year need hospital treatment after injuring themselves on awkward packaging says a new report by the Department of Trade and Industry. Worst offenders are corned beef cans, glass bottles and milk cartons.

I am typing this with a tissue wrapped around a dripping finger, which I sliced open while taking the cellophane off a birthday card.

Time for a government health warning, I think. Or maybe I should just sue.

But why do cards come wrapped in cellophane in the first place?

HOUSE prices continue to soar. One of the hot spot counties is North Yorkshire

Doesn't surprise me. When we bought our house near Richmond 15 years ago - in the middle of a vast, fast, price boom - and using the formula of a mortgage three times one's salary, the price was still reasonable enough for us to get a mortgage on husband's salary alone. There's posh.

Now we are both earning substantially more than then. But to buy our house from scratch now would taking three times our JOINT salary - and even then we'd only just make it.

Some people might be pleased at the rise in house prices. But if, like us, you're living in a house that you probably couldn't afford to buy, then surely something is seriously wrong.

SO most people in their 90s are not gaga after all. According to new research, most still have all their wits about them and are probably wiser and more knowledgeable than their juniors.

As my 50-something wits are increasingly scattered to the four winds, that's yet another reason to look forward to being a grown up.

It's just the years in between that could be worrying...

TRAVEL tip: Don't take your phone if you're flying from Newcastle Airport. Better still - fly from somewhere else.

I arrived back in the dark and cold to find long queues at the car park ticket machines with lots of disgruntled people ahead of me. Soon found out why - the machines kept rejecting our tickets.

A little throng of us trooped across to the little hut at the short stay car park where we hoped to find a real man. No. He wasn't there. The throng - all of us weighed down with bags and baggage - then trudged to another little hut in another car park where a young lad told us that, no, he couldn't give an exit ticket.

We finally ended up at the far side of the long stay car park where we all had to queue and queue and sign our names to get our tickets.

"You've had the ticket near your mobile phone, " said the understandably grumpy attendant when I asked what the problem was.

"Well why don't you warn us?"

"No point. Can't do anything," he said.

Well there is actually. A warning notice would help prevent the problem. But it's odd that it's never happened at Teesside, Manchester or Leeds/Bradford or at any other similar machine.

And as Newcastle airport authorities know when flights are due in, and that their machines won't work, would it be beyond the wit of man to have their pay stations staffed?

Obviously is

Published: 12/02/2003