The Decoration Game

Blokes love stuff.  They just do.  Those chaps that live in caves subsisting on rice and calm thoughts, they are all very well and may go for minimalist chic atop a Hymalayan pea but, given the choice, by which I mean given an Argos catalogue, they’d swap zen for a karoke machine and a snack and sandwich toaster faster than you can chant ‘Om’.

Bluntly, blokes acquire stuff because it is useful.  William Morris (inventor of many wallpaper prints and the classic Minor) was of the opinion that you should have nothing in your house that is not beautiful or useful.

And it’s that ‘or’ which allows blokes to possess items such as replica sonic screwdrivers because, while they may not actually be able to defeat an actual Dalek, they are jolly nice to look at, and hold, and play with when the wife is out.  Screwdrivers plural of course because let’s face it, if you are the sort of chap that owns a replica sonic screwdriver, you are the sort of chap who is going to own more than one replica sonic screwdriver.

Chaps of a blokish tendency, however, tend toward the useful possessions, and oddly enough this too involves collections of screwdrivers.  To begin with, you need at least two types, normal and Phillips head.  Then you need different sized ones, and ones of different length.  Then you need an electric one because once you have used an electric screwdriver, you will be wondering why you have been wasting your life tightening and loosening screws like some sort of bloody serf from the dark ages.

Obviously you will need a shed to store all of this stuff in.  Luckily, you have an electric screwdriver, so putting one together will be a doddle.

Gear is useful, it’s a fact.  There comes a point in a man’s life when he will finally have as many tools and as many jars of assorted nuts, bolts and screws as his father did.  It’s quite a proud moment and one to be celebrated with a cup of tea and most definitely not telling the wife how right you were not to throw anything important away for the last two decades.

The right tool for the right job is important.  A bad craftsman blames his tools but I can tell you with absolute authority that a bloke decorating who discovers on the second brushstroke that his brushes, or roller, are inferior is instantly on the web to Screwfix, in the car to pick it up his order and back in time to pick the moulting bristles or roller pile pillings from the still moist emulsion, and then do the job right.

I have recently been decorating.  There is nothing quite like being in a room with all the windows closed on a baking hot day wondering if the paint is supposed to be that colour or if the fumes are making you hallucinate, listening to Radio 5 because that’s the law.

The latest discovery to vastly improve my life?  Selotape for carpets.

Previously, to protect carpets one would spend time and masking tape sticking down sheets of polythene, or sheets of newspaper.  Not any more.  Now you can buy these big rolls of selotape that stick to the carpet.  Down they go and you can start splashing the gloss about the place without fear of sticky stains on the tufted wilton.  Fantastic.

I am for anything that makes DIY less of a chore.  If you have the means, I heartily recommend getting somebody else to do it for you, but if you must DIY, then at least try to get some cool kit out of it.

My decorating collection is not quite complete.  I rather fancy some working lights, that permit one to do a decent job after dark.

I also rather like the idea of one of those paper suits to keep the paint off you.  Although, one person’s ‘disgusting track suit bottoms that you never wear anymore and looked horrible when you bought them what were you thinking?’ is another man’s Painting Pantalons.  And remember, a shirt is never at the end of its useful life until it’s rigid with dried emulsion.

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. 

Snow business

The recent extreme weather event that swept Britain (snow in winter) provoked a curious reaction from the workforce. The majority of office drones took one look at a white landscape and decided, as one, to take the day off. In some cases this was a good decision because the roads were full of people who had decided to ‘struggle in’. This sort of person thinks they are indispensable to the workings of whatever company they are part of, the sad truth is that, unless they are responsible for opening up the office first thing, or are a council gritter, one day off will not make that much difference. What they did do was made the roads; already ‘treacherous’ thanks to snow, ice and the bloke who has the key to the grit depot not being at work yet, perilous.

Certainly those who did struggle to get to work have an exaggerated sense of their own importance or, you know, a job that actually matters, as opposed to being in sales, marketing or one thousand and one other occupations that take longer than ten seconds to describe.

At least those that got in were kept warm by their own smugness. During the cold snap it was discovered that our office, which is mainly window, was cold. Cold to the extent that colleagues were actually wearing scarves and, believe me when I say this, not for fashion related motives. Rather, they looked like modern Bob Cratchett’s (although I think he had a ‘comforter’ which, until I learned that this was a Victorian word for scarf, thought was a mid-morning shot of gin).

Because we are supposed to care about polar bears, we’re not allowed portable heaters because that would upset the air con and hence bugger the environmentally friendly nature of the building. Sod being environmentally friendly, all the planet has ever tried to do is kill me in a variety of increasingly inventive ways. Nature can be vindictive and has many weapons in its arsenal, gravity being chief among them. Alcohol being another.

What you are allowed at your desk is a thermometer. Not so you can go home when the temperature plunges like a starlets neck line, but so I can play my favourite game: ‘it’s now the same temperature as it is in…’
(fires up internet) ‘Wesconsin!’
‘Is that good?’
‘Can’t be!’.

It’s a plastic digital job and while I don’t doubt that it’s accurate I do doubt that it’s impressive enough to be taken seriously. That’s why I want three climate stations on my desk. The modern one would be stainless steel and feature flashing lights and one of those wind measuring things that look like a device for taking three scoops of ice-cream in one go.

The second one would be made mostly of brass and banned chemicals, feature dials and be housed in a glass-fronted mahogany case. As certain temperatures a buzzer would sound and it would dispense hot tea or cold Pimms.

Finally I want a rustic one. This is essentially a length of shed attached to which would be a length of seaweed, a pine cone and an old man with a gyppy knee. Also, possibly, an onion. Can you predict the weather using an onion? Given the trouble that the recent cold weather caused root vegetable farmers, I’m guessing not. But if you did come up with an onion based weather prediction system, I bet somebody would bring out the related iPhone app shortly after.

This Government hates booze

The British summer has continued to thrill and frustrate at every turn. Thrill because anyone loving statistics will practically get a boner every time the weather forecast comes on and the forecaster explains that this is the dullest summer since 1882, or that we haven’t had a rain of frogs like this in Newton Abbot since records began. Frustrate because it would be pleasant to see the sun on a weekend occasionally.

Lack of rain has also had a profound effect upon my vine. Installed last year, I had great expectations of Jeremy, and he hasn’t disappointed. Earlier this ‘summer’ there were little bud things that I was assured would turn into grapes. This, I thought, was great! I would take the grapes, make my own wine and finally become self-sufficient in booze!

Thanks in part to the weather, the Gallo family don’t have to shut up shop just yet. I believe that vines, however hardy, really want to grow on the sun kissed slope of some Mediterranean country somewhere, with easy access to hours of sunshine and cheap labour during harvesting time as gang-masters beat the Eastern European pickers and gap-year students looking for an authentic travelling experience senseless if they don’t pick round the clock.

My vine does have grapes, yes. They appear to be perfectly formed, yes, even though I had a nasty moment when I saw them turning a dark colour and thought I had vine-rot or something (I’d forgotten I’d bought a red grape variety vine) but as to the size? I actually think I’m the first man to successfully grow raisins.

I have, as a result, scaled back my expectations accordingly. Gone are the plans for a 400 gallon stainless steel tank to hold the end product, back in come the glass demijohns as the fermenting vessel of choice. I’m also trying to scrounge those little wine bottles that they give you on airplanes. On the plus side, my label-printing costs will be much less than expected.

All this makes me feel like an outlaw. I’m not sure what this Government hopes to achieve by clamping down on the more sensible aspects of enjoying alcohol. For an administration that appears to chase popularity the same way a fat kid chases an ice-cream van, it’s odd to make having a quiet pint in your local boozah more expensive and less convenient while at the same time letting giant supermarket chains sell blue alcohol to youths who drink it on street corners. Maybe the Government suspects that sedition, as well as hops, ferments in the taverns of England.

Drinkers today are getting that same feeling that smokers got twenty years ago, with ‘no drinking’ notices springing up about the place. In a couple of decades, the only place you’ll be able to drink is in your own home and the only stuff you’ll be able to afford to drink is stuff you’ve brewed yourself.

English men will love this. It will turn home brewing from a smelly pastime into a necessity and will mean that they never have to take their wives anywhere ever again. It will also mean that every home with space will have two sheds, one for keeping garden tools, compost and porn in, the other to be converted into a small brewery tap.

Along with home brewing, the home pub snacks industry will develop. God alone knows how they make pork scratching, but I suspect all you need is a pig and a giant pencil sharpener, how hard can it be?

Men love making stuff. Recently, there’s been no point in making stuff because men used to make things like shelves and, er, other stuff. These days the demands of domesticity are a little more elaborate and it’s harder to knock up a DVD player in your shed than it looks, especially when you can buy one from China for twenty quid. If the Government thinks it will drive men to virtue by depriving them of their pubs and brewery beer, they are sadly mistaken. Rather, men will gather in their sheds, sup their home-brew and talk dissent. Until summoned to the house by their wife for their dinner.