Pesky scientists! They’re always causing trouble. Last Tuesday, they were in the newspapers with a report that “brain-training games” do not make the brain better at anything except playing the games themselves. There’s no evidence of real-world benefits, sharpened memory or improved cognitive function.

Is this news? In my experience, scientists never say anything else. I can remember several previous reports that scientists have found brain-training games to be useless.

Seven years ago, they were already telling us that such games were of “no practical use to the elderly”; I remember that story because it was illustrated by a photograph of Nicole Kidman. I thought at the time: she must be wondering who to sue to first, the newspaper or her dermatologist.

(Kidman had been selected, of course, because she advertised “brain-training machines” on TV.)

Non-Kidman adverts that got into worse trouble were those for Lumosity, a game that (according to the American Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection) “preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline” by suggesting it could help combat this. According to those busybody scientists, it cannot. In January, makers Lumos Labs were ordered to pay $2m in redress.

So, you know. We hear a lot about these games being useless. Researching a little deeper behind the eye-catching headlines of last week, I find that yes: this latest report is actually a study into previous studies. The findings were not just that brain-training games are useless, but that scientists who have already said brain-training games are useless were right! They are useless!

I imagine the latest batch of scientists making this announcement with their thumbs on their noses, waggling their fingers at the rest of us: morons, non-scientists, who sit lamely playing our “brain-training” games in the hope of greater intellectual rigour. Useless! Useless! Can you hear me at the back? You dunce!

This week, perhaps we can enjoy another report saying that last week’s study into studies was itself correct. And then maybe they’d like to have a big party, all these bloody scientists, clinking glasses as they make announcement after announcement about how pointless it is for the masses to try to sharpen up our old, soggy, ailing, failing brains. We might just as well sit playing with an old car tyre on a rope.

There is a group of affected people here that nobody is thinking about. Not those who are especially worried by cognitive decline (or not that alone), but those who can’t enjoy themselves unless they feel they’re doing something useful.

Does that ring a bell? You either are such a person or you’re not. If not, chances are you know someone who is and you find them slightly stressful. It could be your wife. Or your father. (Or, if you’re my husband, both.)

I am terrible at doing nothing. I’m not brilliant at doing one thing at a time, either. Ideally, I would fill out my tax return while watching a film; peel potatoes while reading the post; send emails in the bath. You can always recognise my restless peers and me; we are the people whose feet you hear tramping along the pavement at the other end of the phone line because we can only make calls while moving. Ideally, moving towards somewhere gruelling like the dentist’s, the MOT testing station or a cocktail party.

They say multitasking is a female trait but it’s not about gender, it’s about personality type. Some of us find “relaxing” to be, in itself, nerve-racking. If we aren’t doing something useful, or at least that seems useful, we feel guilty, impatient and mortal.

“Can’t just sit about here, enjoying the sunset!” we think. “Not when I haven’t cleaned the fridge, answered those emails, started a pension, learned Japanese, got a haircut, bought loo paper or written a novel. I can do at least three of those things while appreciating the orange glow at the same time.’

People like us need to have tasks as hobbies or at least think of our hobbies as tasks. My husband always used to reflect admiringly on the loving way his mother allows his father to speak of the gardening as a terrible chore.

“That lawn won’t mow itself, Kathy!” sighs my father-in-law, shaking his head as he abandons the sofa. “And I suppose someone had better dead-head that cosmos.”

There’s been less talk of that from my husband since he realised that he too would be required to cluck sympathetically throughout married life, as I scurry about saying: “Well, if somebody doesn’t make an apple pie then I think we’re going to go hungry! No no, you stay there and enjoy your Maigret. I’ve got to bleed the radiators anyway.”

And this conversation will be happening at two o’clock in the morning.

That’s how I came to play poker professionally, rather than as an occasional social game: after a year or so, I couldn’t allow myself to play it unless it was a source of income.

That’s how younger people turn “catching up with friends” into “getting my social media updated”. (A study published last week found that some nine-year-olds are checking their smartphones up to 10 times during the night. I understand those nine-year-olds. I am those nine-year-olds.)

And that is why it’s cruel to tell people that brain-training games do not train the brain. If they don’t stave off cognitive decay, sharpen the memory or improve intellectual ability, then we’re just… why, we’re just sitting here playing sudoku! Fiddling while Rome burns! It’s pure enjoyment with no extra function and, since for us there is no pure enjoyment without extra function, it has to stop. The fun’s been killed.

Bloody scientists. Why can’t they just switch off, kick back and watch some telly?