Kindles can't stop a bullet!

Books, famously, furnish a room, and arguably a soul.  They also furnish a handbag, a backpack, a messenger bag and a pocket.  Especially a pocket.  It has been suggested that, back in the days when Penguin were publishing what are now described as design classics fit to feature on mugs and deckchairs, but back then were, you know, books, artful seducers used to carefully select just which book would be just visible jutting jauntily from their (tweed) jacket pocket, ensuring that any impressionable young woman might note that the dashing chap at the end of the bar was familiar with Lady Chatterly, and opening up the possibility that she might play ‘Mrs Mellors’ for a short time.

Books are also something of a comfort.  There’s a reason why the ‘YA’ section of your average high street book store is enormous, it’s because the only thing that teenagers consume more of than fiction about misunderstood young people is haribo and zit cream.  If, as a teenager, you are so confused that you don’t even understand yourself (except for your feelings about Lizzy Feathergrew who sits across from you in double chemistry, your feelings for her are very, very clear, but you wonder if she’s into girls) then it’s good to read about teenagers struggling with being teenagers.  If they also have to struggle with vampires, alien invasions or oppressive regimes, then so much the better.  Just read that shit up and wait until you’re twenty six, sitting at your desk or standing at your lathe or slinging latte or assisting at lambing time or whatever, and you go bolt upright (very much like you used to do at the thought of Lizzy Feathergrew) and say, out loud, ‘Fuck.  Allegory!’.  Then move on.

We take books into uncertain environments.  There are rightly celebrated relics of the battlefield, books that have stopped bullets because the soldier in question was either clever or fortunate enough to have a book, for instance The Bible, in a pocket that covered an important organ (not The Mighty Wurlitzer).  That The Bible has saved the lives of so many Tommies because of its ballistic blocking abilities is less to do with its miraculous heritage and more, I would suggest, to do with the fact it records everything from the creation to Armageddon.

Ironically, if our gallant soldier was carrying a slim volume of verse by a poet reflecting on the horrors of war, he’d be fucked.

The moral of the story, if you are going into battle, read Stephen King.

Sadly, there are still too many battlefields.  There are also many uncertain environments.  And no environment is more uncertain than ‘abroad’.  That is why the choice of holiday reading is so important.

If it’s a beach holiday, then the prime directive is this; you must not be precious about the bottom of your book absorbing around a litre of perspiration from the tummy you rest it on (hopefully yours, if you rest your book on somebody else’s tummy whilst on holiday, you are reading the wrong blog) and being forever impregnated with the scent of suncream.

As an arch bibliophile (look it up before calling the police) I find the notion of giving away a book about as disturbing as the notion of trying to track down Lizzy Featherstone on social media years after she left school.  Without saying goodbye.

Anyway, despite requiring counselling if I lend somebody a book, I am tremendously impressed by the libraries that spring up in resorts, where tourists drop off one book and pick up another.  Like literary STDs.

There should be a military imprint of bestsellers, with Kevlar front and back covers.  If nothing else, this would enable some squaddie somewhere to proudly show off his copy of ‘Fuck the French’ with a bullet embedded in the front cover (a picture of Jeremy Clarkson, in leather jacket and jeans, looking incredulous).

Bullet position?  Head or crotch.  You choose.

As might the enemy.  As with ‘Mrs Mellors’, might your attention be drawn to a cheeky cover poking out of a pocket and, if you were a foreigner might you think ‘Ah, Clarkson’?

Books, you see, are the best defence.  Ask a teenager.

Country Life

If I’m honest, I’m not quite sure why I started reading Country Life magazine.  Probably, it was in the hugely mistaken belief, which is the driver behind any story about celebrity, that through reading about a subject, one could become part of that world.  This is not a new phenomenon and is why so much Young Adult fiction has a dash of the fantasy, many teenagers spend a lot of time wishing that they were somewhere or someone else, the irony is of course that eventually they get their wish, they turn into an adult, someone else entirely, although one would hope they never lose their taste for Haribo.

Country Life magazine is, at first glance, the publication most associated with waiting rooms, the exception being the waiting room at Dignatas, in which the sole reading material available is the ‘Daily Main’, after reading which some visitors have been heard to exclaim ‘Fucking Hurry Up’ at the door marked ‘Exit’.

Anyone taking a cursory glance at the cover, advertising, contents and overall glossiness of the publication might think that this is the magazine for Torfs.

It is.  But it’s so much more.

With the exception of the ‘Evening Star’ (the sister paper to the ‘Morning Star’ and yet not remotely associated with the inexplicably more popular ‘Daily Star’, the ‘Evening Star’ being the sort of newspaper that would be published by the hard left if they had knocked off after publishing the morning edition, celebrated as traditional journalists do, then brought out an edition where they really wrote what they thought and where every editorial began ‘Right…’) Country Life is the most militant publication not actually produced in the front room of a self styled ‘activist’ who wears a combination of corduroy and cheesecloth and churns out their publication on one of those hand cranked printers the sole purpose of which was to give millions of schoolchildren an introduction to purple ink and solvent abuse.

Think I’m joking?

Here’s how militant Country Life is.  It abhors littering.  And bad behaviour.  And ill manners.  And unnecessary noise.  It hates pollution.  It is an advocate of the preservation of environment.  It is the champion of the agricultural sector that we rely upon to, you know, eat.

Moreover, it champions the preservation of our heritage.  This takes many forms.  The most obvious is that it tends towards Stately Home Porn but, and this is the saving grace, it knows where to draw the line.  Published every week apart from at Christmas where one imagines the entire staff are off first killing and then cooking their Christmas dinner or at least causing a scene at Waitrose, the magazine often spreads a feature over two issues, occasionally this will be a feature on a Stately Home with words about architecture and history, and images (‘figs’, never photos) of the grand hall, the long drive, the privy, and so on.  Occasionally, if it is not term time and the younger daughter of the house is back from a Scottish university where she doesn’t have to pay fees (how do you think these people hold on to their wealth) there will be a picture of a young woman in a ballgown, cuddling spaniels.  Otherwise, images of the owners remain mysteriously absent.  That’s because usually they might be confused with the gargoyles festooning the East Wing.

I started buying Country Life magazine when I noticed that it featured articles of interest to me, such as farming, food production and the future of our environment.  The property pages I skipped past and the section on antiques and the art market were not really for me, I couldn’t afford a £12,000,000 estate in Scotland or an oil painting of the same place at the same price.

I started subscribing to Country Life because it had something important to report every week, or something interesting to say about gargoyles, or because it featured an estate for sale that looks like an oil painting, and there’s always the lottery.

It’s also something of a counterpoint to the rest of the media (apart from ‘the Field’ magazine).

And, of course, there’s always the young lady gracing the frontispiece, like a posh Page Three.

Clubabble Computer Games

Gentleman’s clubs.

Misogynistic bastions of privilege where men retreat from a world they do not understand and which values they do not share, in short, a world with females in positions of authority.

Gentlemen like women in a position of authority in only two circumstances, when they are dealing out either punishment, or pudding.  Imagine a typical Gentleman’s club, such as the Apostrophe Club just off Pell Mell, founded in 1742 by greengrocers, or the Europa Club, universally known as ‘The Green Door’, founded as a retreat where Valets could relax and bitch about their employers (and of course famously fictionalised by P G Wodehouse as the ‘Junior Granymede’).  They conjure an image, do they not, of deep armchairs, blazing fires, dusty libraries, members flaccid beneath The Times or the Pink ‘Un, and the aroma of cabbage and spotted dick emerging from the dining room, although it will never be called the dining room, it will have some preposterous title such as ‘The Restorvation’ or ‘The Games Room’, the latter an excellent example of how clubs like to fuck with strangers by giving each room a title totally unconnected with its purpose, leading to visitors defecating in ‘The Billiards Room’, meaning a lifetime ban for them, and Korky Gussalt winning twenty guineas for pulling off the most impressive, and disturbing, trick shot ever achieved on the brown baize.

Gentleman’s clubs, it could be argued, by their very intransigence, are preserving our heritage.  Manners, decency, drinking at lunchtime, smoking, racism both institutional and personal, a fear of the underclass, the greatest fear being the realisation we can’t do without them and, of course, the most unfashionable value of all to hold, that as a chap you don’t understand women, that you will never understand them and that, deep down, this is because they don’t want to be understood.

If you doubt me, look to Shakespeare, look to Dickens, look to (Amis, once upon a time your name would have been here, not any more, you arse) Barnes.  Look to any chap who has ever put pen to paper and they will tell you women are unknowable.

It’s not charming, it’s a fucking conspiracy.

And that’s the sort of attitude that allows you to establish a club called ‘The Citadel’, to admit only male members (ooh er!) and then, and this is the genius part, charge £5,000 a year for membership but make it so difficult to get into that people are pathetically grateful to pay to get in, like a shit night club on rainy Thursday in Droitwich.

With all the oak and tweed about the place, not to mention testosterone, gentleman’s clubs are an excellent place for the playing of games.  These include games of chance, such as card games, games of skill, such as backgammon, and games of social exclusion, such as Dungeons and Dragons.  Where chaps gather, a game will soon be in the offing, even if it is ‘club cricket’ played in the Short Room with a bread roll as ball and copy of Wisden as bat.

The only other place where the female presence is this unlikely is the bedroom of a teenage boy.

These too, are environments where the playing of games is indulged in, although in this case ‘backgammon’ is likely to be the name of the level VII war-warg that ‘Acroblaster the Destroyer’ (AKA Simon) rides into battle.

It’s time that the console came into the club.

Men join clubs because they are socially awkward.  If they weren’t, they would be able to make friends without having to be in close confinement with others, with alcohol, that they know generally share their views.  What I am suggesting is that instead of feeling comfortable starting a sentence ‘I’m not racist but…’ they should feel comfortable flopping down in an armchair, picking up a controller and doing unspeakable things to one another during a 72 hour Halo tournament.  Or even better, challenging other clubs, or ‘guilds’ as they will quickly become known.  Gambling may be involved, it’s one thing to play for honour, another to bet your chef.

Naturally, a gaming room would have to be established on the premises.  I suggest ‘The TenBox Room’.

English eccentrics - Car Pets

There’s a certain sort of person who keeps soft toys on their bed.  These people are called children.

Anyone else with a stuffed toy on their bed is to be approached with caution for a number of reasons.  In ascending order of things you have to worry about; least sinister is that the soft toy is a container for something, such as a sex aid or recreational drugs, and is owned by a person unfamiliar with the concept of draws, or the socially acceptable receptacle for contraband, a hollowed-out book (why else do they issue Clarkson in hardback?).  Or it could be some sort of surveillance device, which is OK if it’s owned by the adult who will shortly be using it to keep an eye on the nanny, the cleaner or her cheating dirtbag husband, or by somebody who has their own website, less OK if it was a gift from somebody.  Worst case scenario, it’s a soft toy purchased and owned by an adult, who has given it a name.

The exception to the soft toy prohibition is if the soft toy was a gift from a boyfriend either purchased as a token of affection ‘to keep you company when I am not here’ (Translation: ‘I don’t trust you, you skank’, or won at a fun fair through a game of skill although, frankly, if you can win a soft toy at a fun fair, the thing deserves to go in the trophy cabinet in the chap’s front room, not sit on a pillow.

The sort of person who keeps a soft toy in their car is a different class of nutter entirely.

Again, the only acceptable owner of a soft toy resident in a car is a child.  Such soft toys are not only useful for playing games with and sleeping with or resting one’s head on, but are jolly useful for striking a sibling.  Warning: such toys quickly achieve character which, if not offset by frequent laundering, can develop into personality.

Adults keep soft toys in cars because…fuck knows.  If they are a bloke and don’t have children, it’s probably because they are a peado.  If they are a woman, it’s probably because they have run out of space on their bed.  Again, acceptable uses include a bear-cam to keep an eye on the chauffeur, or as a head rest on a long journey, or a short journey back from the pub, but otherwise you have to wonder.

Having said all that, the sight of car pets makes me smile, and I have been known when travelling in a car with car pets to put on an impromptu puppet show.

Top tip: always remember that the driver, who has the power to screech to a halt and order you out of the car, will have great affection for her car pets and is unlikely to find any one-act play that concludes in frenzied furry sexual congress accompanied by hoots and grunts nearly as amusing as you do.

Virtual Edinburgh Festival Goer

Music festivals, I am sure, are best enjoyed from the comfort of your sofa, where you can enjoy the music and actually see the band without the drawbacks of trying to find your way back to your tent in the dark afterwards, having to pay £4.00 for a plastic piss pot of Carling, having to piss in a plastic piss pot because the queues for the toilets are visible from space, and having to pay £400 for the privilege.  All of this and the threat that the headliner will only play new material.

Literature festivals should be better.  Except that anyone who is remotely good has already sold out, and if by chance you do get to see an author who you really, really admire, you will discover why writing is a solitary occupation as they reveal in the interview that they have the charisma of a damp sponge and when doing the reading why they get Charles Dance to do their audiobooks.

There is only one festival that is, from the moment you set out to go there until the moment you get back, sheer joy, the Edinburgh festival.

First of all, you can get there by sleeper train.  How fucking awesome is that!  You can go to sleep on a train and it’s official, you’re allowed.  You won’t wake to the sound of screaming because your head has lolled onto the shoulder of the teenager next to you and you have drooled on their mobile, you won’t wake to see your station receding into the distance.  Also, club car.

There’s the city itself, so marvellous that you might think you are in a Playstation game that will, at some point, involve the use of the term ‘Templers’.  When the Fret blows in the tops of the buildings are lost in mist and Edinburgh moves from beautiful to magical.  People complain that the ‘real’ Edinburgh of housing estates and working class people is hidden from the tourist city.  Great!

And the festival!  There are shows in the morning (apparently), in the day, in the night and long into the wee small hours.

Lots of it is free, thanks to the BBC.  The best comedy shows are recorded for the BBC so you get in for free and grin with anticipation because you know, you just know, that two years from now you will be able to say ‘oh him, saw him in Edinburgh, a couple of years ago.  He was good.  Back then.’ to friends who have just spunked £80 to go see the ‘new’ comedy sensation.

And even if you are having a shit time, if you have seen one experimental dance troupe too many (that’s one) and are wrestling with a hangover that needs a name, like a tropical storm (‘Hangover Henry, all hangovers are male), you are having a better day than the poor bastards who leaflet on the Royal Mile.  Because there can be no sensation quite like trying to interest people in a show you have been crafting for a year and then realising that people have no interest in your one woman ballet chronicling the importance of the role of church leaders in ending apartheid in South Africa, ‘Tutu 2 tutu’, in fact they have so little interest, they won’t even take a leaflet, although they might be avoiding you because you have blacked up for the part.

And that’s not even close to the elation you experience after steadily drinking all day when you are in a tiny club with sweat dripping down the walls, a plastic pot of warm lager in your hand and a comedian so utterly without fear that he has titled his show ‘FGMOMGWTF’.

Sadly, not everyone can go to the festival.  This is where technology comes to the rescue.

What you need is a festival goer fitted with a webcam to rove the city, sitting in pubs, queuing for shows, laughing like mongoose on acid at jokes he won’t recall the next day, while the subscriber sits at home with a shitload of Red Stripe and a bag of oven chips.

Until then, we’ll just have to make do with Twitter and the Tattoo on the BBC.

English eccentricity

If there’s a standard scale for sanity, and there probably is but who wants a search history that can be used against them in court as a result of their looking up ‘am I normal?’ on Google so I’m not going to attempt to find out, then, like metric and imperial, there will be one scale for the rich and another for the rest of them…I mean us.

Let’s call the scale of sanity for the ordinary man in the street, or indeed Jasper Carrott’s nutter on the bus, the Metric scale.  A reading of zero means that you can pass for ordinary, you don’t twitch or drool and you don’t feel the need to perform a cleansing ritual after meeting a gypsy.  At the top end of the scale, 100, are people who are so insane they occupy positions of power, or kill people, or indeed both.  It’s around the 60 to 70 range that things get interesting, that’s where your, let’s face it, more amusing mental health issues are pitched, like believing what you read in the Daily Mail.  Tracking back towards zero we pass through the superstitious range, which encompasses everything from paying actual money for a palm reading ‘you are very gullible’, to wearing your lucky shirt on match day.  Oh, and by the way, one day you will realise that because you always clean and iron your lucky pulling shirt, those actions make it your lucky pulling shirt.

For the rich, the Imperial scale covers three main ranges.  Firstly, there is fucked up, which is what happens to an eighteen year old when they come into a trust fund.  They spend the fund initially on drugs and booze, and thereafter on trying to quit drugs and booze, possible solutions including therapy, The Priory, or a cult.  Secondly, there is inbred.  If you can inherit the family chin, stands to reason you can also inherit the family kinks in the cognitive reasoning, including the firm belief that it is still acceptable to use the term ‘darkie’ if you lower your voice while doing so.

Then at the top of the scale we have eccentricity.

Madness plus money equals eccentricity.  If you wanted to marry a goat you would be, depending on the community you lived in, laughed out of town or stoned to death.  Regrettably, there are also some corners of geography inhabited by people that would probably apportion some of the blame to the goat.  These are the same sort of people who, in conversations about women’s rights, make the sort of comments that give you the distinct sensation that your arse is clenching into your hat.  If you have a title, an estate and, and this is the important bit, some say over who gets to be vicar in the parish you own, the one with a charming Norman church, a rather lovely rectory and no knife crime at all, then it’s pretty likely that the bans will shortly be posted for the forthcoming nuptials of the Earl of Kinkey and Miss Willamina Goat.

Let’s be clear, being eccentric is fabulous, as long as you don’t hurt anyone in, for instance, your scientific experiments largely involving melons, you’re beloved.

Ever had a day, a whole day, when you have not got out of your pyjamas?  You have moved from bed to sofa to fridge to sofa to bed in one glorious relaxed manner, and you’re not even ill?  Fabulous, isn’t it.  Now imagine not getting out of bed for a week because you can’t be arsed.  That’s eccentric.

Working class and in Tesco in your jim jams?  Out, you fucking scum!  Titled and in Fortnum and Mason in a dressing gown?  Of course you are, you don’t need a wallet, you’ve got an account at the place.

The English tolerate eccentricity because, by and large, it’s more entertaining than harmful.  An aristocrat with a thing for trains may indulge his obsession by building his own railway, miniature or, my preference, full sized, on his estate.

Eccentricity is not madness, it is more refined.  It is the state of mind that causes one to be entertaining and harmless, and leads to one being fondly admired.

Fox Tray

Bloke goes up to a bar and orders five pints of bitter, a gin and tonic, a scotch, and a bag of pork scratchings.  Barman asks ‘Would you like a tray?’.  Bloke answers ‘Don’t you think I’ve got enough to carry?’.
Can you give an old joke a home?  For just £24 a month, you could keep Radio 4 Extra going and so ensure that jokes like that are preserved for the nation, whether the nation wants them or not.  For more information, see Barry Cryer.
That joke is so old that there are remarks about it being old written in hieroglyphics.  Old, and true.
Because nobody should operate a tray without being trained in the art first.  By trained I mean nobody should try to use a tray who is not a character in a P. G. Wodehouse story or a drunk uncle who does a rendition of ‘Mule Train!’ that is astonishing in its capacity to shock, delight and put the poor drunk bastard in A&E with a concussion every Boxing Day.  For the unwary, the untrained or those without sufficient upper body strength, the tray is simply a way to drop a lot of things more efficiently.
One should never have to transport more than two cups of tea at any one time unless you are a paid employee or, to give them their politically correct term, skivvy.
The tray itself though is something of a social marvel.
At one end of the social spectrum, say Downton Abbey, the tray itself is made of silver and is worth more than the vicar's virtue, and that's before it's loaded up with enough booze to make the conversation at the dinner table of an English country house bearable to anyone who thinks that 'tying one's own flies' is a simple precaution to prevent unintended. chapout.
Then there is the Formica tray, that has done service in many a home for many a decade.  In more civilised times, the tray would be beringed with the evidence if a million cuppas safely transported from kitchen to front room.  In these less enlightened times, the tray is a personal dining table, allowing each family member to enjoy their evening meal not in the company of each other, but bathed in the gentle light of the idiot lantern.
Let us not forget either the plastic tray, black or red, always slightly damp, picked up at one end of a self serve counter and loaded with sandwiches and beverages before being used to assault the cashier who thinks it's OK to charge you £7.99 for a BLT and a coke.
And let's not forget coke and, in that act, take a moment to reflect the makeshift tray, that flat object that can be used to transport stuff from hither to yon and, when fashioned from something black and shiny, is ideal for serving stimulants.
My new acquisition is far from an impromptu tray, although it is stimulating.  It is, in short, magnificent.  Who can fail to be thrilled by a proper tin tray featuring a country house scene with a couple of foxes frolicking in the foreground.  Who?  As a the owl, also pictured, might ask.
It's a tray that tells a story.  What is happening in the house?  Is there a party, is there a tray within a tray in use?  Or is there bad business afoot, is the daughter of the house being forbidden from marrying her true love, a humble woodcutter, albeit one who has had his woodcuts exhibited at the Tate Modern.  And what of the foxes?  What role do they play in this drama.  Is it Evelyn Waugh, or M R James territory that we're in?  All of these questions and more occurred to me as I saw this object for the first time, but perhaps the most pertinent was 'are you going to buy that tray or just look at it some more?', as posed by the shopkeeper.
I think it's charming.  I am also convinced the house pictured is the one from 'The Mousetrap', which would explain why the tray is just the right size to serve up a book and a cuppa, or a revolver.

Who's been sitting in my seat?

I bet Portillo doesn't have to put up with this!

In possibly the greatest rehabilitation of a personality since Paul went from tax collector to apostle, Michael Portillo is now better known as a presenter of charmingly inoffensive soufflé-weight documentaries about train travel than as The Hammer Of The Poor.  Essentially, the format of ‘Trains to Charming Places’ is that Michael, sporting a wardrobe that makes one question his sexuality and clutching a guide book as outdated as the ideas he had when in the Cabinet, takes trains hither and yon and stops off to discuss heritage trades like being a farrier, fletcher or cooper (back when these were trades and not merely surnames.  Presumably following the tradition of names deriving from trades, a century hence Tommy Callcentre and Susie Barista will be common enough names) before announcing ‘look at my bright trousers and tremble’ and ambling off towards the station.

Anyone watching this programme for longer than the necessary time (which is the length of time it takes to press the button on the remote to take you to the next channel) will note that when the presenter makes his train journey, he is inevitably in a not terribly crowded carriage.  This of course makes perfect sense as crouching across from the presenter is a cameraman, sound guy, director and the girl who fetches the paninis.

Anyone who commutes on a regular basis will know that such space is far from the norm, but then again the programme probably wouldn’t have the same relaxed air if Michael were standing in a vestibule (loom it up, it’s the right word) between carriages with his nose rubbing the camera lens, thanks to the overcrowding.

Neither does Michael apparently have to find his won seat by excavating a pile of used Metros and the debris of what appears to be a takeaway Medieval banquet.

Naturally, railway companies have to make huge profits somehow, and the latest trend appears to be charging ridiculous ticket prices and only employing cleaners every third day.  This means that you usually have the opportunity to play the Goldilocks Game when alighting, in other words ‘which anti-social fucker has been sitting in my seat’.  If you are lucky, it’s somebody who has carefully refolded their copy of the Metro before dropping it on the floor, if you are unlucky, it is somebody who has either breakfasted on the flakiest pastry ever made, or is a leper.

Occasionally though it’s just a single coffee cup.

What, Watson, can we deduce from this.  Firstly, that the drinker favours decaf, as their coffee has obviously not given them the energy required to bin the fucking thing.  Secondly, that there are either an oligarch or a fare dodger, as it is unlikely that anyone purchasing a ticket at today’s prices can also afford store-bought coffee.  Finally, that they have joined the growing tribe of adult litterlouts (yes, leaving a coffee cup for somebody else to clear away, when you actually have to walk past a bin in the carriage to exit, is littering).

Cardboard coffee cups are the new fag butts and as such are the very worst and most offensive sort of litter because coffee, like fags, is a product consumed by adults.  Crisp packets and sweetie wrappers are annoying litter but one can almost understand why Little Fuckers, sorry, why children, discard them, it’s because they are careless, have not been brought up properly and have never spent a Sunday morning tidying their front garden by plucking Haribo wrappers out of their hedges.

Commuting, I think, makes one more intolerant of stupidity, be it passive aggressive littering, leaky headphones or the inappropriate use of the mobile ‘phone in any carriage, actually, on any train I am in or on or even waiting for.

Which is why it would make for a magnificent conclusion to the series to see Portillo completely lose his fucking mind with an annoying fellow traveller who has their shitty music on too loud and beat the little prick to death with his Bradshaw.

Now that I would watch.

Man Cave

Back in The Good Old Days when the only qualification required to become an eminent natural philosopher was the possession of a beard so huge, established and respectable that it had its own mistress, Britain’s museums were stuffed with stuff.

Often, stuffed stuff.

The glorious age of Victorian Empire era expansion allowed the British to roam the world, identify interesting bits of it, and then either chip them free for relocation to Islington or shoot them, skin them and then put them in a glass case, in Islington.

This then was the golden age of museums.  Truly, wonder houses, the most wonderous thing about them being that a Briton could see the creatures of the African Interior without risking the twin perils of the age normally associated with seeing a lion; catching something vile and perishing in a sweaty heap of linen in a hammock or, being eaten.

These museums were curated by Men.  Men with beards, men who may have been the most learned of their age, but did not know the word ‘cluttered’, men who, when faced with the problem of housing another thousand startled looking exhibits of creatures newly discovered/slaughtered, would simply add another wing the size of a cathedral to their museum.

Men love stuff.  Men love to collect.

Women do not.  The exception is when certain women do the menopause.  They then start to notice the ads in the back of TV Quick offering them the opportunity to purchase a thimble collection that will be the envy of their friends.  Particularly acute cases collect cats.

Men collect.  They start as schoolboys collecting footie cards, comics, stamps, coins, anything that can be collected.  And they never shake the habit.

Men collect so much stuff that an astonishing 80% of them invest in specialised off-site storage, commonly known as a shed.

A shed owned by a woman will contain: a lawnmower, half a bag of compost, curtains that she has put up at the windows.

A shed owned by a man will contain at least: two lawnmowers (one working, one awaiting repair or resurrection), a dozen tins of paint, each with an inch of paint in the bottom that is now so hard it could survive re-entry, a failed attempt at home brew, a successful attempt at home brew, porn, a Playstation 1, more porn, a collection of ‘Commando’ comics that the missus thinks you threw out two years ago and which she would be more upset about than the porn you still have, a stuffed animal.

This condition has led directly to the creation of the Man Cave.

If you spend any time at the sort of edge-of-town industrial areas that feature DIY superstores, areas of waste ground with weeds pushing through broken concrete, and invariably somebody with a caravan who is selling ‘hamburgers’ and ‘hot dogs’, then you might have noticed self storage units.

Such places are actually mundane.  They are mostly used by businesses storing stock and, depressingly, food banks (surely we all hope for the day when the only food banks in operation are those that supply blokes with forbidden treats that The Wives will not permit them, leading to the glorious prospect of a self storage unity filled floor to ceiling with boxes of Curlywurly) and not, I suspect to the disappointment of those who enjoyed ‘Silence of the Lambs’ a little too much, used as trophy rooms by serial killers.

They are though, apparently, used as Man Caves.  When a woman likes a bloke enough to commit to a long term relationship with him, so that they move in together and she can Fix Him, a chap is often confronted with the bewildering notion that his collection of 120 mint in box Transformers are not welcome, and there’s this thing called eBay.  Or Oxfam.  Or the tip.

Up and down the country, there are men who spend a couple of hours a week just…sitting, in their ‘comfortable’ armchair, amid their collections of replicas (never ‘toys’ or ‘tat’) or vinyl or books or VHS or Betamax or footie game programmes and just…being.

Somebody with a beard should build a monumental self-storage facility, so that we can all enjoy the Museum of Bloke.