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. 

The science of chance

I am walking, in my normal jaunty fashion, from the train station to home, looking forward to uncorking dinner, listening to 'a history of the world in 100 objects' on my iPod. The episode I am listening to is about a golden statue of a goddess, from Sri Lanka.

It's pretty racy stuff. The goddess is described as a two thirds life size female figure, with an hourglass figure, wearing a sarong on her lower half and topless with 'perfect' breasts. Rather than an object of titillation, she's an object of veneration, the narrator explains.

And just as he's describing her, I mean to the very second, I walk past the window of just about the only clothes shop in the village and the mannequin in the window is wearing a skirt but has her top half exposed.

Why? I'm not sure. I assume that the window dresser is back of shop, looking out a new top (it's way after closing time and, as odd as this may sound, seeing a topless mannequin makes me somewhat embarrassed for the plastic woman I the window.
Has she been forgotten, has the window dresser left in a rush or, god help us, is the shop trying to be controversial or trying to really hit that giggling schoolboy demographic? The mannequin stands in a typical cocktail party pose, glass in one hand, the other hand on hip, wearing a long skirt. Her head is cocked as if half listening to somebody enthusing about Star Trek while looking for somebody more interesting and better looking to talk to - it's a pose I recognise - and totally unselfconsciously unaware that she's topless. At a party it's bloke's dilemma number eight; at what point do you tell a woman you are talking to that she is experiencing catastrophic blouse failure (answer - you don't, there is no way that woman is ever, ever going to speak to you again, the atmosphere simply cannot cope with the heat generated by frequent meetings of somebody that embarrassed; so you just have to stand there trying desperately to think of a tactful way of explaining that you're catching an eyeful while simmering in the social hell that you've already delayed too long and she'll think that you're some sort of leering pervert. If you must, the correct way to deal with this is to mention the situation as early as possible in the conversation and do so by commenting either on her tattoo or lack of. Simple.).

What are the chances of that happening?

There are two explanations. The first is that the probability of seeing something related to something I am listening to is actually quite high. '100 objects' is my podcast of choice for my walk home and as my route takes me past a number of shops, and in particular charity shops, it's reasonable that in a podcast about artefacts I'd be walking past something that bears a resemblance to the object being described.

The alternative is that, along with all the other laws and rules that govern the smooth running of the universe, from the way electrons orbit atoms to the way that steam wafts from the open window of a burger van on a cold winter's match day, there's room for a set of rules governing the lives of individuals and the universe ordered the events that led to the circumstance we call 'coincidence'.
And don't worry, that doesn't mean that everything is predetermined - quite the reverse - it means we may possibly have been missing stuff that's been organised for us, like a bloke who nips out for a fag at a stag do and misses the stripper. Everything from missing out on meeting someone significant because you went to the doughnut shack rather than the cafe for breakfast, all the way to missing being centre stage in a natural disaster because you decided not to visit a small Pacific island during asteroid strike season.

Things

BBC radio and the British Museum (could there be a more thoroughly proper combination of bodies? you can practically taste the tea) have combined to bring the listener 'the history of the world in 100 objects'. Essentially this does exactly what it says on the tin (object 74) and attempts to link the evolution of humanity from two million years ago to now to the objects that man has created and used to help this evolution.

This achieves three essential functions, it finally confirms my theory that things are important and can make you happy - geeks everywhere can celebrate that they might not have a girlfriend but they do have an XBox and the latter is more likely to be featured in this series than the object of their impotent lust: the girl who works behind the counter at the newsagents, resulting in a frequency of visits that is borderline stalking and leads to the accumulation of a vast number of unwanted magazines about, for instance, carp fishing (panic buy in desperate attempt to kick start conversation after eighth visit of the weekend).

Secondly, it is one in the eye for creationists. The British Museum is home to a two million year old hand axe, the earliest tool known to man (not counting the ones that do the breakfast show on local radio), excavated from deserts and so on by scientist types. Creationist museums are, if I recall correctly, home to lots of waxworks of bible scenes and pop-eyed loons.

Finally, it delivers the cheery message that we are still evolving. This is not immediately obvious. There's a pretty compelling argument that human regulation peaked in 1974, with space travel and supersonic passenger flight. People in 1974 were actually living in our future (this explains why the sweets were so brightly coloured, now thanks to nanny-knows-best laws about food colouring chemicals, sweets are essentially the same colour as dung. Well, compared to the arrhythmia inducing pallet of the 70s they are).

The objects chosen so far have been a stone cutting tool and a hand axe (described as the Swiss army knife of the stone age and something of an exaggeration, as there is no corkscrew on it) and one of the modern objects later in the series is an Arab credit card. So, essentially, we have evolved from using a rock to chop up antelope meat to using a plastic wafer to chop up lines of coke in a Knightsbridge night club.

The one hundredth object is the subject of a public search and I have no doubt that there will be plenty of nominations. You'll get your environmentalists (or just mentalists) suggesting things that will take forever to decompose in a landfill, like plastic bags, styrofoam burger cartons or Jordan. You'll get organised campaigns to elect some sort of joke object (inevitably, this will involve a facebook campaign. The inventors of facebook must be the most conflicted people on the planet, on the one hand their invention is hugely successful, on the other hand, all the users appear to be enormous gits with too much time on their hands), like anal beads...only to discover these are not a modern invention and were first discovered up some pharaoh (known as 'the smiling mummy') buried three thousand years ago.

There will be many worthy suggestions and I've no doubt that the trend will be modern; somebody will have that 'hey, who could live without one of these' moments and nominate the hat, or the lawnmower or the cricket bail or something.

Me? I'm nominating the ex. In particular the ex you broke up with because, until you found out the meaning of 'passive/aggressive', you simply thought they were immensely irritating. Maybe not an object, but bloody objectionable. And the best thing is, you just know that two million years ago, in a cave in Africa, this conversation took place:
'You're not eating your antelope?'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Oh, OK.'
'OK? OK? That's all you've got so say. You don't care about me at all do you? You don't care about my feelings, what I want.
(Confused) 'I thought you wanted antelope for tea?'
'Oh shut up.'
Thinks: the sooner we evolve beyond this, the better.

Or maybe I'll just nominate the lawnmower.