Home Alone

I’m a bit of a feminist, me. Oh yes, I've always been up for a bit of equality – as far as I can see we should all be able to turn our hands to whatever takes our fancy. Not for me the traditional division of labour between the sexes. As an independent master of my own destiny I stand as free as any woman!

I can do the cooking, cleaning, mending, shopping and spread the gossip with the best. I apportion the budget and pay all the bills. I can bake a cake, rustle up a roast and my banana bread is to die for. On top of all that I keep a clean and tiny abode and if needed I darn a bloody good sock. 

Plumbing, electrics and shelves are no mystery to me. I can assemble a flat pack in seconds flat - fact. I can take a piece of seasoned wood and lovingly cut it, shape it, smooth it, stain it, put the bits together with glue and dowels and turn it into furniture. I've built walls, made windows and put a roof above both. 

More manly credentials still - I've taken engines out of stuff, dismantled them, replaced bits and put them back together AND they worked. I've both flown aircraft and jumped out of them. I've sailed yachts, dived under oceans and driven a warship. I can rough it too; I've camped and caravanned and slept under the stars and skinny-dipped on New Year’s Eve from the longest beach in Brazil… and I once push-biked around America. (blatant plug there) 

I've lived in a desert and in a jungle and sailed the South Atlantic. I've seen Ernest Shackleton’s grave on South Georgia and Napoleon’s prison house in St Helena and I was once presented to Princess Anne. Not as a gift, you understand - I didn't wear a bow or anything - but I was carrying a sword at the time. Oh yes, I've been around a bit. I've served my country, I've climbed its hills and seen its dark satanic mills. I've trod the boards, won awards and more and more and more. 

So you can imagine the grave disappointment I suffered when I belatedly discovered that all men are not so self-reliant. That, more and more in this day and age, men seem to conform to the scornful representation of their gender in the media. The hapless immature man-boy, utterly incapable in comparison with his vivacious, intelligent, multi-tasking, multi-skilled mother-substitute and all her friends. 

And then, all of a sudden, a rash of new excitement in the media about the various ways and legalities of reproduction without the nasty, messy conjoining of man and wife. Why, it’s as if we are dispensable, fellas… virtually extinct. Well I, for one, have had enough...

The time has come, men, to fight back from the brink. Wrest from their delicate, girlie grasp the keys to the tool shed and regain command of our rightful domain. Follow me fellas, to the sunlit uplands of our ascendancy and we will take back our proud place in society once more! 

Just as soon as I've cleared it with the missus.