EVEN in these recession-hit days, there is one section of manufacturing which cannot fail, writes John Adams. There is, always has been and always will be, a market for paper tissues thanks, in large measure, to females. This fact is backed up by a new su

EVEN in these recession-hit days, there is one section of manufacturing which cannot fail, writes John Adams.

There is, always has been and always will be, a market for paper tissues thanks, in large measure, to females.

This fact is backed up by a new survey which reveals that women will spend more than one and a third years of their lives crying.

Researchers have concluded that the average female cries for 12,012 hours - and about 55 minutes - over the course of 78.5 years.

And that would take a lot of tissues to mop up the tears.

Males and females start off level pegging on the cry baby stakes when during the first year of life we shed three hours of tears a day just to let the grown-ups know we need changing, feeding or entertaining.

Between the ages of one and three, children's cry rate drops to two hours and five minutes a day.

It falls dramatically to two hours and 11 minutes a week between four and 12. By then, I suspect, the blubber rate for boys and girls has begun to show a marked difference.

Hormones, arguing with friends, being dumped and being grounded are the main reasons for teenage girls to cry for two hours and 13 minutes a week.

And there is no let up when they reach adulthood. According to the research, from 19 onwards women experience the trickle of tears down their cheeks for 2 hours and 14 minutes a week.

On the face of it, they are having a wail of a time.

One thing which may have made some F1 fans shed a little tear was the decision by seven times champion Michael Schumacher to abandon his comeback after retiring three years ago.

It would have been good to see how the 40-year-old got on against the young bucks of the circuits, especially Stevenage's very own Lewis Hamilton.

Would he have got into his old habit of inexplicably ramming rivals when it looked like they were going to beat him?

But it was not to be. The dashing German announced that he was bringing down the chequers flag on his resurgent career even before it got off the starting grid because a private testing day had aggravated a neck injury he suffered in a bike accident in February.

But I reckon the real reason was that he hurt his neck practising turning to sneer at his rivals as he left them in his slipstream.

I must admit that there was no possibility of dropping off to sleep with boredom during Schumacher's racing days.

But I did feel like I was suffering from Rip Van Winkle Syndrome when I saw a press release from Stevenage Borough Council about an event coming up at the town museum.

This invited people to "come along and discover what it was like to be an evacuee during World War 11".

Either I had missed nine world wars or the person writing it did not know the difference between numbers and Roman numerals.