I am gawping at Sandy, the contestant from Big Brother. Have I come to this, being electronically excited by someone just because I have seen him on the box?
I remember watching a wintry Mother Courage in female company and being told after the performance that, as a rule, war and famine apart, women found heat harder to cope with than cold. A clothes thing, partly - winter making fewer flagrant demands upon your wardrobe. Since which time I've been looking out for a performance of Brecht's saga of endurance set in Juan-les-Pins. But men also find summer more exacting than winter, because in the summer it is assumed we will want to do manly things.
Such as - to take one assumption at random from a trying week - going to sea. Is the Solent "sea" exactly? The very fact of your making such an inquiry proves my point: if this were winter the question of what is or isn't sea would not crop up. Anyway, it was in the Solent that I found myself the other day, friends having decided that bouncing along the waves in a big boat with white leather seats and a plentiful supply of champagne was just the ticket for the dog days. Messing about on boats - isn't that what men are meant to do when the sun shines? Even though they don't like waves, don't like speed, don't like feeling nauseous, don't like nautical talk and don't like having to wear deck shoes?
Mainly what I've never liked about boats is the person whose boat it is. Since heroic fortitude is supposed to be of the essence, it baffles me what small-minded, compulsively neurotic old fuss-pots boat-owners invariably are, asking you not to lean here, not to stand there, noticing every fingerprint on the chrome, and spending half the voyage on their hands and knees mopping up splashes of champagne from the quarterdeck, wherever that is. To be allowed on this boat we even had to comply with strict instructions as to the composition and colour of our soles, and though we were not subjected to an inspection I noticed the captain eyeing my feet when he ought rather, it seemed to me, to have been keeping an eye on the oncoming traffic.
But I fixed him. When he offered me a go at the controls, certain I'd be desperate to steer, I articulated the gravest insult a man of my sort can deliver to a man of his. "Not interested in toys," I said, putting my fingers all over whatever chrome I could find.
And then there's the barbecue. Having spent time in Australia I am presumed to be expert in bush ways - tracking, burning off, telling Dreamtime stories and cooking meat on flames. But in truth you learn nothing of any practical use in Australia, because Australian men automatically take you to be effeminised and do everything for you. I cannot count the number of barbies I have enjoyed in the starry outback or in a suburban garden in Sydney or Melbourne, but I doubt I was ever called on to light a match. "You look after the sheilas, mate," they told me. And so I did.
But the sun is out and I must give a barbecue. If the sea separates the men from the old women - those who go to sea being the old women - a way with charcoal divides my sex even more conclusively. Only by laying down five firelighters to every splinter of charcoal am I able to start anything resembling a fire, and the consequence of this is that the sausages are incinerated the minute I put them on the grill and any surviving chop tastes of petrol. So this time I have decided to start early, not panic, and try to think the thing through scientifically. And it works. Glowing grey coals, exactly as it says on the box. No gas-station odour. And heat enough to cook a cassowary. The only trouble is it's 6.30 in the morning and no guests are expected for another seven hours. By which time the fire is out and I am reduced to firelighters again.
Out buying more, because we're into the third day of sunshine, I am suddenly seized with one of those recognition attacks - call it an intimation of celebrity - which has you battling against shame, because you don't want to be gawping at someone famous but the lesser part of your brain makes you. Then I notice that the person I'm gawping at is wearing a kilt and I realise it's Sandy, the contestant from Big Brother who demonstrated his moral superiority to the other housemates by urinating in the wastepaper basket before escaping over the roof. Has it come to this, then, that I am electronically excited by the proximity of someone so transitory and undistinguished, simply because I've seen him on the box, I who abominate celebrity, television and men who piss to make a point?
I decide to put it down to the heat. And the residual sea-sickness. But I am badly shaken. Suddenly I fear I am not the man I thought I was.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
