When a man loves a woman

I was looking at a new survey the other day which says that women may be getting more masculine. The report wasn’t intended to suggest that ladies are now picking up the great and unique habits that we males have been refining over centuries like always being tidy, and never, ever, being wrong. It suggested, though, that women were more interested in football and going to the pub than they used to be and are more likely than ever to get out the overalls and take up DIY.

I can only assume this survey was carried out at a drag artists convention, or perhaps an away day for pantomime dames, or maybe the survey was done on a fictional street like Wisteria Lane where the Desperate Housewives do everything from rebuilding hurricane damaged houses overnight to taking on armed lunatics, before checking their make up and baking scones for the church fete.

Wherever it was done I can assure you that no one in my house was consulted for the research. There are no signs of this new order of masculine girls amongst my kids who I had assumed years ago would grow in to youngsters with a Macauley Culkin take on life, getting left alone at Christmas but having the time of their lives battering baddies. The reality is that pink is still the colour of choice here and any ideas of electrifying door handles or swinging paint pots at burglars while defending their home would come way after buying perfume and bath salts. My girls are less Home Alone and more Jo Malone.

As the only bloke in our house I’m banned from watching football but, lately, I think I’ve hit on a solution to my problem by mentioning two words that send my wife running out the door screaming. The words are Science and Fiction, and if I lock myself away in the TV room saying I’m going to watch a Star Wars movie, the effect is like saying I have swine fever. It clears the house straight away leaving me free for the footie.

As the gentle sex is so off the scale alien to me, despite the lack of enthusiasm for tackling robbers in a toyboy fashion I’m relaxed about our house getting broken in to because of the little habits of the females who live here. I’m sure I could tell if we had been burgled before I even stepped over the threshold. Opening the door I would notice strange footprints in the talcum powder that spreads like a plague over our floors, I would see the blood left by Kirby grips sticking through the soles of whatever soft, quiet shoes villains use when they’re turning over your house, and I know that any burglar would have to tidy up in our house first before finding anything worth stealing.

At home I’m hopelessly outnumbered by women, three to one. My wife Debbie has passed on to our daughters the magical tricks of being a real woman which we men will never, ever understand. So far as I can see, these involve being able to “turban” a towel round wet hair without it unravelling, learning to decorate surfaces with cotton wool, and putting talcum powder on after a shower by throwing it up in the air and then running round and round naked underneath as it fall to the floor and spreads to the walls.

It seems to me it’s also necessary if you want to stay in the girlies club that you never, ever put things back where they belong, you must talk to people only if there’s a mirror behind them that you can use at the same time, and remember to always leave your undies hanging up on the floor.

When we moved in to our house we bought a cream carpet for our bedroom. I remember fondly how clean and chic it looked and, if I dig out old photos of five years ago, I can smile with the memories of that carpet, an old friend long gone. Now it has abstract patterns all over it, a mix of dropped eyeliner, sparkly foundation and widespread multi coloured hair bands. Do these bands just fly off their head without women knowing? Am I likely to be hit in the face in a crowded Top Shop by hair bands spontaneously pinging off and jumping everywhere? No wonder people look bruised after the January sales.

And, of course, since time immemorial there have been complaints about men leaving shaving bristles in the sink. Well, what about the bath after a lady, of any age, decides to shave her legs? That’s got to be the worst of all as it’s usually mixed in with conditioner and bath oil in a gooey mess that could clean graffiti off the Great Wall of China. Our bath used to be white until it discovered the delights of multi coloured fizzing bath bombs from Lush. Now, like a girlie at her first disco, it has a permanent pink flush.

Girls also seem to come with an extra chromosome which I call the cat chromosome where everything from a moggy to a herd of stampeding rhinoceros have to be welcomed in to the house with open arms, adopted and fed, and perhaps even given Dad’s dinner if he’s late home.

So, surveys are all very well. But girls getting more masculine? I don’t think so. Next thing you know we’ll have a survey saying men are getting more feminine. I bet you all my moisturiser and hair products that it will be a lie.