I went to dinner tonight with a couple who a) live in the same street as Alvin Stardust and b) even more impressively (if thatÂ’s possible) have pretty much built their house from scratch. They bought a tiny, run down bungalow in the late nineties and have subsequently turned it into an impressive two storey house and it is now worth five times what it was before. I am totally in awe of anyone capable of doing such a thing.
I say this as a man who feels like I am Handy Andy’s, slightly more handy older brother, Simon, (who resents the fact that his name doesn’t happen to rhyme with handy – or anything, except pieman, which is of no use to a handyman – and so he never gets called Handy Simon, despite the fact that he is actually handier than Andy. You can understand his resentment. It is deserves the epithet, but he’s not going through the indignity of a sex change and the expense of changing his name by deed-pole so he can he know as Handy Mandy. He has some pride. So no, he’s not going to called Randy either is he?) if I manage to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture correctly. Genuinely, I have sweat on my brow and have probably slightly chaffed my skin screwing in one of those screws and I feel like a real man.
So to be meet a man who, in the sweat of his face, has built a new home for his partner and children is very humbling as well as being an affront to my own masculinity. How can I compete with such expertise? I considered driving back to Cheddar and seeing if my mum and dad still had the spice rack I made for them in 1979. To show me and him were cut from the same cloth. But I realised that by the time that the 5 hour round trip was over, dinner might have got cold (and there was also the chance that mum and dad have perhaps misplaced the spice rack. I notice that they arenÂ’t using it anymore. But maybe they are keeping it somewhere for best. You know, if thereÂ’s ever a very special occasion when some bottles of herbs and spices need to be held in place on a wallÂ…)
I think being able to take raw, natural ingredients and hew and carve them into useful and functional items is one of the things that does still define masculinity. Imagine being a woman and having to choose between a bloke who can build you your dream house and a bloke whose toilet roll holder is currently on the floor because his attempts to fix it to the wall have all failed.
Not much of a competition.
I could counter, well could this builder man have made up a slightly amusing, improvised aside about a minor TV personalityÂ’s almost certainly non-existent brother?
And yes, he probably could have. But is enough of a man to know that that would be both childish and a waste of his valuable time. Time he cold have used to turn a local dilapidated stable into a school for deprived children.
So I think he wins again.
Incidentally, he also cooked a marvellous dinner.
The poof.
