Life's truly dreadful when you are sinister. The world is always against us.

We are an oppressed minority in a society which goes out of its way to make life difficult for us, even calls us awful names.

We're not talking the evil, dark meaning of sinister, here. We are referring to the real meaning of the word - left, as in left-handedness.

We lefties stumble awkwardly through a right-handed, mirror-image world where even simple pleasures are denied us (such as uncorking a wine bottle because it has a right-hand thread). The most basic of tasks leave us looking awkward and clumsy.

Did you know ordinary scissors are designed for right-handers? The blades are the wrong way round for 'goggy-handers' to exert pressure on the cut.

Fridge handles are placed on the left for right-handers; handwriting runs from left to right, forcing the left-hander to push the pen along instead of pulling. That's why they turn the page almost upside down to write, or use hand and arm contortions reminiscent of a a maladjusted crab.

We have to adapt to their right-handed implements and look silly trying to use them. The stigma is also obvious in all languages. The dictionary definition of gauche (French for 'left') is "tactless, socially awkward, without grace". They call us cack-handed or southpaws.

If right is to wrong what left is to right, left must be wrong. Get it?

There was a time in Japan when mere left-handedness in a wife was sufficient grounds for divorce. In ancient times in this country, left-handedness was considered to be a sign of evil, hence the bastardisation of the word 'sinister'.

My mum used to tell me horror stories of her ordeals as a left-handed schoolgirl.

Her teacher would order her to take her left hand out of her sleeve and put it inosde inside her dress so she was forced to write with her right. If caught using her left hand, it got a rap on the knuckles with a rule.

They say left-handers are artistic, inventive and quirky. If you look at a list of famous left-handers it certainly suggests that. It includes Alexander The Great, Julius Caesar, Napolon Bonaparte and Bill Clinton.

Most famous film stars are left-handed, including Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Marilyn Monroe, Robert De Niro, Nicole Kidman, Cary Grant, even Kermit The Frog and Bart Simpson (probably because their creators Jim Henson and Matt Groening are too).

Mind you, we have to own up to some infamous characters on the left side - the Boston Strangler, Jack The Ripper and George W Bush's dad. But now we can take our rightful place at the head of, and slightly left of, society. The Left-handers Liberation Front is bringing us out into the open. There are websites devoted to just us. Chat rooms exchange experiences world-wide of being lefthanded on a right-handed planet.

Shops and Internet businesses such as www.anythingleft-handed.com sell a staggering range of items to make life better - left-handed boomerangs, tin openers, guitars, playing cards, scissors, vegetable peelers, batting gloves, clocks which go anti-clockwise, you name it.

You can even get a left-handed Swiss Army pen knife with "inverse machining of the can opener for total convenience, comfort, efficiency and safety of use; reverse screw on the cork opener for a natural screwing motion."

There are also left-handers clubs to give us a social setting in which we can plan our sinister uprising. Now we can proclaim that left is, er, right - if that's all 'left' with you.

Dieu et mon droit becomes Dieu et ma gauche, and that other highest of authorities becomes the European Court of Human Lefts.

Just remember this: The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body... therefore, left-handers are the only people in their right minds.

Updated: 09:16 Tuesday, April 01, 2003