The Men Commandments

Thankfully, one of the kids at my school had the business acumen of a young Sir Alan Sugar and had started selling pornographic magazines. Where he got them from we never knew. If you were really lucky, though, you would find a free one in a hedge. You don’t seem to see this so much any more. I often wondered how this started. Was it someone’s remote storage place? Were they hidden there by the publishers, trying to get us hooked? No one knows. These days hedges have been replaced by the internet.

I did eventually have to buy one (the hedge supply had dried up) and I have to be honest and say it actually scared me. The nudity and images were too much too soon for me and I disposed of it in the neighbour’s hedge. A lovely old man lived there with his wife, and he did have a heart attack shortly after my hedge gift. Was my copy of Razzle (with its ‘3 Bum Special’ feature) to blame in any way?

Things went into hormonal overdrive every Friday night with a new TV series called Dempsey and Makepeace. Move aside The A Team and The Rockford Files, Glynis Barber has arrived! By now I had a TV in my room and I would say good night to my parents a full ten minutes before it started – much to their surprise. What kid when finally allowed to stay up late goes to bed early?

Saying I was tired and needed to go to bed, I would leg it upstairs to get ready. I needn’t go any further other than to say that the TV needed a good wipe down on a Saturday morning. Those snails had been on the move again…

SCHOOL DISCOS

I think our fear of the dance floor stems directly from the experiences at the school disco. I’m sure the French spend their youth grinding up against each other to soulful ballads but in my experience all you used to do was skid on to your knees across the polished gym floor, push the nerds into the girls and pogo around like an idiot to Adam and the Ants.

When Phyllis Nelson’s ‘Move Closer’ came on, it was simply a signal for me to take a break from the action and shovel more crisps, E numbers and Panda Pops down my throat. If you did get lucky and find a girl actually willing to dance with you, her mere physical presence in your postcode brought instant arousal. I think that’s another reason why men are so rubbish at dancing.

Trying to dance while hiding a massive diamond cutter in your trousers can be a very traumatic process. I also remember a very dodgy teacher ‘insisting’ he had a slow dance with all the school hotties. I think it was this that first got me thinking that teaching might be the career for me.

SATURDAY JOBS

Saturday jobs are the first taste we get of the dullness of paid work. And wearing an ill-fitting polyester uniform. But you learn valuable lessons. Firstly, that people who work in management are often from the shallow end of the gene pool. A gene pool someone may have pissed in. Secondly, you learn the importance of skiving and that if you’re given a good job to do, you make it last as long as is humanly possible.

I was lucky in that after a few jobs waiting tables and washing up, I was headhunted from the groceries aisle of Sainsbury’s by Marks and Spencer. That’s not strictly true, although I did work on the groceries aisle at Sainsbury’s. There was a stunning girl who worked on the till who I was besotted with. My affections were sadly never returned. I guess it’s hard to be won over by a streak of piss in a three-quarter-length brown overall and matching Stay Press brown pants. That were three inches too short. In movies, a mental person is usually the one wearing pants that are too short for him.

One of my best mates, Kevin, and I both managed to get jobs at Marks and Spencer. This was the place to work as they paid well and had a great canteen. That and the fact they had a lingerie section you could gawp at.

What happened next was the stuff of novels and movies. Two friends enter the same institution but are given vastly different jobs and their lives and fortunes change for ever. I was put straight on the tills. The best gig. Ten items or less. I became something of a hotshot, famed for my rapid scanning technique. The ‘Maverick’ of Winchester Marks and Spencer. My friend Kevin, my ‘Goose’, however, was put on trolley collection. This is a role usually reserved for people who enjoy licking windows. He was not happy about it. I was.

Sadly my time there came to an end as my Saturday hangovers got worse. Most mornings I would excuse myself to the store sick bay to sleep off the effects of a night on the cheap cider. Or the ‘24-hour flu bug’, as I told them. Things really came to a head one Saturday morning when I didn’t turn up and went to a big party for the weekend instead. The personnel department feared the worst – that I’d suffered an accident – and called my home. (I should point out here that I used to ride my motorbike into work. When I say ‘motorbike’ I mean one of those 50cc hairdryers on wheels.) My younger sister happily told them where I really was.

Upon returning to work the following Saturday, I was quizzed by the personnel lady and I’m afraid to say a very bad lie came out. I told her I had been at a beloved aunt’s funeral. Dabbing my eyes in a performance De Niro would have been proud of, I was thrown off when she then said, ‘That’s odd because when we called you your sister told us you were headed to a party.’

I reflected momentarily on this before replying. To this day I’m ashamed of this even more shocking lie: ‘My sister, yes, she has something wrong with her… Her brain… Retarded… Very sad.’ The poor woman in personnel looked at me with a mixture of utter disgust and pity. Pity, I guess, about what would become of a young man who could lie in such a fashion. A DJ, obviously.

UNDERAGE DRINKING

Just as my experience of the working world was forming, so was my enjoyment of getting drunk with my mates and then trying to get laid. In my peer group I looked the oldest because I had bum fluff. Who can forget bum fluff? Wispy growths of hair around your chin that you thought made you look like Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The plain truth was you just looked silly

Whether you had bum fluff or not, there was one thing all teenagers needed: fake ID. You could usually get your fake ID from someone’s older brother who was like Donald Pleasance in The Great Escape – ‘The Forger’. He’d make them on his BBC Micro or Commodore 64. The standard was pretty poor.

Getting the booze was by two routes, both with their own hazards: the off licence or the pub.

Let’s look at the off licence first. This needed planning. Any hormonal wobble in the not consistently broken voice could jeopardise the whole mission and it would be no White Lightning or Merrydown cider for you. I remember once going in and successfully buying six litres of cider and two cans of tramp juice (Special Brew as a kind of a chaser in the unlikely event any ladies joined us) then going four feet round the corner to where everyone else was lying in wait for the goods. As I was dishing out the stash, the owner walked out and rumbled us. Showing the morals of any true businessman, he asked if all this booze – six litres of industrial-strength cider and two cans of Special Brew – was for me. Yes, I replied, very high-pitched. He then walked away, happy with his rigorous spot check. Within the hour I was vomiting by a canal having also wet myself.

I’m now going to tell you a story that my dad brings up at all family get-togethers. It involves the two pillars of teenage rites of passage: underage boozing and trying to impress girls. The story goes like this: I had been invited with my mates to a party at someone’s house whose parents were away. I knew it was in a posh area so I thought I would upgrade my poison to show my class: I took a bottle of red wine. Which I drank from the bottle. I also thought the girls would be impressed if I drank it really quick. This I did and I was pretty sure I was the very life and soul of the party. Then it all started to get a bit fuzzy. The sweating started first, and then the room started to spin. I ran, knocking over things on sideboards, to the toilet. The night was not going as I had hoped but worse was yet to come. My friends saw my rapidly deteriorating state and called my dad to come and get me.

They carried me to the comfort of the kerb outside, which is where my dad found me when he pulled up in his brand new car. A Ford Escort he was so proud of. The first brand new family car we’d ever had. He never even uttered an angry word as I was gingerly put in the front seat and my two giggling mates got in the back. We set off. This is where the really bad thing happened.

The motion was not good for me. I began retching. ‘Wind the window down if you’re going to be sick,’ my dad urged. My motor skills weren’t up to that and I threw up all over the dashboard, gear stick, even my dad. My mates in the back couldn’t hide their laughter. My dad was now beginning to retch but still managed to drive the incredible exploding son home. He had his jacket pulled over his mouth in an attempt to escape the dreadful smell next to him. In his brand new car. My memory is hazy as to the events that followed. What I do clearly remember is waking up the next day.

First thing I felt was my throat. It was on fire. My nose was blocked. But that was nothing to what came next. Into my consciousness in a drip-drip manner came the memory of what had happened last night. In my dad’s brand new car. Holy shit. I then realised there was a very strong smell of disinfectant in the house. Some late-night cleaning had happened. I didn’t want to leave my bedroom.

I hobbled downstairs to see my mum. She said nothing – just nodded in the direction of my old man reading his Sunday paper. Could this be any worse? I told my dad how very sorry I was and made the promise I am still making 20 years later – that I would never get in a state like that ever again. He summoned up his dad wisdom and said quietly, ‘Bollocks.’

I was stunned. ‘Sorry?’ I said.

He then explained that of course I would do something like that again, and asked what had happened. I told him about the red wine and the rapid drinking method of seduction. He said, and I remember it to this day, ‘Son, you will do many more stupid things to get your dick wet.’ I had never heard that expression before and still haven’t to this day. But his words were so true.

My mum and my sister were not so understanding. For the next few weeks no one could sit in the front passenger seat because of the stench of chunder. The seat was permanently stained in a V-shape where my legs had been. Weeks later little bits of dried pasta could still be found.

I said earlier there were two ways of getting booze. The other way was pubs. For some reason, we always went into pubs in groups of about 30. It was strength in numbers, I think; the theory being that it would take too long to check our entire group’s fake ID. In my local pubs, checking our age extended to ‘You old enough to be drinking in here?’ A chorus of various pitched ‘Yeahs’ would mean lagers all round. We were now men. Drinking with other men. But with poor facial hair.

VIRGINITY

To men, young men, virginity is something you want to get rid of ASAP. To young ladies it’s something to cherish. The frigid ones, anyway.

I’m not going to say too much about the losing of my cherry as gentlemen never tell. That and the fact I was very bad. All I can say was that it was on an overseas holiday with my family. I took off my espadrilles a boy and put them on again a man. The whole encounter lasted no more than a few minutes. And that included the taxi back to hers.

At school there were so many rumours and myths surrounding sex. For a while I was seriously led to believe that if you had sex with someone and you were wearing a Swatch watch (remember those?) then they wouldn’t get pregnant. This may be why I have two small children.

THE END OF FIRST LOVE

Underage drinking, losing your cherry, getting and spending your first pay cheque. You think these mark you as a man. They don’t. Having your heart broken for the first time does.

I remember when I was first properly dumped. 1986. Man, it hurt. Mainly the pain from trying to break the vinyl single of ‘our song’. You cannot simply snap vinyl. You have to bend it several ways. It takes ages. Which lessens the thing, really.

My mind was tormented. When would I ever be able to see and touch a pair of breasts again? So many happy memories of me staring at the very things Steven Williams had shown me in that magazine that time. Makepeace had a pair of these too. Now I was girlfriend-less but more importantly boobless. Time to play really depressing music over and over again until my mum told me to get outside in the sun and open my curtains.

I needed to heal my aching heart. My parents needed me to stop moping. It was decided I should join a club or society. My mum had heard from a friend with a very serious and polite son that he was enjoying the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. So I was made to go along. Stop laughing. We are the people who are first on the scene of major disasters at fêtes with some weak lemon barley squash. I once saved a man’s life – he had severed an arm at a banger racing meet – with weak lemon barley squash.

Every Friday evening in a damp and smelly church hall, I and some other teenage boys would meet up and practise first aid. The best bit was French-kissing Annie. That’s Anatomic Annie, the rubber doll we were supposed to be honing our resuscitation skills on. The next girl I kissed benefited from the time I spent perfecting my snogging. I pinched her nose and blew into her mouth.

There were also girls in St John’s Ambulance Brigade and we would get to see them at the various public events we attended. I was something of a rebel among my fellow Johners by wearing Stay Press jeans as part of my uniform. This was not standard issue, I need you to know. This Fonze-like coolness was countered by being forced to wear a beret. I looked like Frank Spencer. However, at one memorable school fête, during a lull in field casualties being brought in from the coconut shy, I somehow managed to start getting off with a girl. In the back of the ambulance.

With her grey uniform, black tights and all that triangle bandage play, it was too much for me. I casually removed my beret, took off my white handbag that contained my first aid kit (bandage, safety pin, lemon barley squash and some Chewits – the Chewits were for me, gotta chew something while saving lives) and the ambulance was soon rocking. We were discovered and I was asked to leave the brigade. I was made up. It was the first time I’d had my hand up a girl’s skirt. The Stay Presses had worked a treat.

Over the next few decades, various rites of passage would happen to us. Moving in with someone. Them moving virtually all your stuff into the nearest bin to allow more space for all their stuff. Owning your first home. Having your first mental breakdown trying to buy that first home. Attempting your first flat-pack. Surprising yourself with the number of swear words you know while building that flat-pack.

Whatever the rites of passage, men are tested – and when that testing comes you can bet we will rise to the occasion. And do something odd. The boy in the Stay Presses is now the man who still carries a small quantity of weak lemon barley squash just in case.

III

THE HISTORY OF MEN

THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY

Men love history. You’ve only got to look at the hordes of strange men who hang around the Military History section at Waterstones to realise this. Not too many around the Homes and Interiors section or Wellbeing, but history? We love history. In most Sopranos episodes, big Tony Soprano was enjoying whatever was on the History Channel. By now most areas and subjects of history have been covered. You could say some have been over covered. I mean, how many more books about Nazi Germany can be written? I liked Stalingrad as much as the next man but when they start bringing out books like What Hitler Had for His Tea: Volume III: Wednesday or An MTV Cribs Special at Adolf ’s Bunker we know the market is saturated.

This chapter is a fresh look at the great moments in man history. All told from the point of view of a man whose brain is slightly addled from overdosing on butterscotch Angel Delight as a kid. My filter will focus on man history’s greatest hits. Sure, everybody knows who Albert Einstein is. He invented the theory of relativity. He also had great inventor hair. What the hell does it mean, though? It teaches us nothing about ourselves as men. There is a statue of Albert Einstein standing outside the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. It should be the man who invented the remote control. Or a statue of Percy Spencer. You don’t know who Percy Spencer is, do you? This is exactly what I’m talking about.

Well, he is in my opinion a greater scientist than Einstein. This is because Percy Spencer was the inventor of the microwave oven. His story is the epitome of what men’s history should be about. Yes, other scientists may have worked out ways to provide clean water for millions of people and that’s great, but every man should have a special place in their heart for Professor Spencer. He has provided millions of men with an amazing gift. The ability to be able to make an inedible meal within 30 seconds. Plus he accidentally discovered the technology while he was trying to blow stuff up.

As a former employee of the US Navy, Spencer was trying to refine and produce very powerful microwaves for use by American fighter planes – I presume so the pilots could heat food in their cockpits and enjoy a nice ham and cheese toastie while warmongering.

One day he accidentally strayed into the path of these rays and noticed that the peanut chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. He realised that these rays could cook things. But the brilliance of Spencer was that he didn’t decide to go down the route of trying to turn his discovery into a horrible death ray. Oh no. He decided to use it for male emancipation.

With the advent of the microwave we no longer had to make a hash of trying to cook a meal with proper ingredients and four hours’ cooking time. We no longer had to suffer in silence eating beans on soggy toast, because now we had a machine that could nuke a meal in 30 seconds and we wouldn’t have to miss any of the football on the television.

OUT OF THE SEA

If we’re going to do this thing properly we should take our starting point as the moment we crawled out of the sea. This one’s a no-brainer. We all know men hate the sea. Sure, we’ll swim in it, we’ll hang around on the beach and look at it, but live in it? No way.

You’ve only got to look at any man on holiday whining about all the dried saltwater on his back and the fact that his soggy shorts are making his arse itchy to realise, men + sea isn’t going to be a long-term deal. Our genitals don’t like it either. Shrinkage happens, as Jerry Seinfeld told us.

So at some point around 315 million years ago we decided we’d had enough. That and one of us spotted a prehistoric babe in swimwear and someone selling cheap counterfeit watches and to the beach it was, baby!

For the next 314 million years or so we ambled about on the earth splitting into hundreds and thousands of species. This makes sense. Men aren’t the best at staying together; we like to drift off as something catches our eye. You often see women frantically looking for their boyfriends and husbands in shopping centres only to find them safe and well staring at the widescreen TVs or fondling gadgets. I’m always losing my wife at the supermarket. Maybe they need a desk for Lost Men to go to.

This is a store announcement. Has anyone lost the following men: Steve, Bob and Gary? If these men are yours please come and collect them from the Lost Man Desk…

Without wishing to sound dismissive of this period, not much really happened. What man couldn’t enjoy wasting 314 million years doing fuck all? Man heaven.

Obviously I’m not counting the dinosaurs – they were very exciting – but this book isn’t called The Dinosaur Commandments (that’s the next one). In fact, the most exciting thing that happened to mankind during this long era was that around 100 million years ago, we reached a crossroads in our evolution.

MOUSE OR MONKEY?

We had the choice to become monkeys or mice. That’s right, it was a simple case of would we rather be mice or monkeys? And who doesn’t love a monkey? Think of how much as kids we loved the PG Tips adverts with the piano-moving chimps. Arguably the greatest advertising campaign ever. Chimp removal men. Genius.

We rightly chose the path of monkey and modern man avoided the prospect of a tail and buck teeth (apart from the inhabitants of certain parts of Norfolk).

Then after a couple of 100,000 years (men don’t like to rush anything, it’s all in the preparation) we worked out it would be easier to walk on our hind legs and use sticks to smash things up. This was made possible by another huge evolutional leap: the opposable thumb. Evolutionary scientists will tell you that this development was important because it enabled us to pick up wood, make tools and hold things. This is all true, but thumbs were a much more important development in man history. Now for the first time since the universe began, we could give each other the thumbs-up.

No talking, no elaborate rituals, just a simple thumbs-up. The thumbs-up sign of course reached its zenith in the mid-twentieth century with the advent of Happy Days and the invention of the Fonzie double thumbs-up. The thumbs aloft was then ruined for ever by Radio One DJs and Sir Paul McCartney.

CIVILISATION

The primitive cave paintings of Trois-Frères in southern France contain some of the finest preserved examples of prehistoric art. Roughly 311 million years after crawling out of the primordial ooze, man decided to chronicle his achievements by taking some animal blood and tree sap and painting on the walls of his cave. If they hadn’t there would have been no Tony Hart, Rolf’s Cartoon Club or Neil Buchanan’s Art Attack. It’s not even worth thinking about. Though Morph was ruined when they brought in that plasticine wanker Chas.

What did these brave Neanderthals depict in the early paintings? Their battle against rival tribes? The taming of fire? A list of all the woolly mammoths they had hunted and killed? Nope. They simply drew a massive penis. Really. It says a lot about the psyche of man that you can travel back to the cradle of humanity and the first tentative steps towards civilisation and literally find a willy scrawled across it. You can imagine one caveman spending hours painting a hunting scene, then going for a wee and coming back to find a big cock and balls scrawled across his hard work and his mates in the corner sniggering. It’s reassuring to know that almost 15,000 years later we’ve come full circle from drawing penises in French caves to drawing the very same penises on bakers’ heads in French language textbooks at school.

MAN’S FIRST LOVE

It was around about this time that man started the most significant relationship of the millennia. Fire.

We can never truly know how man was introduced to fire but we know that it was definitely love at first sight. However, it’s strange that almost 10,000 years later we still can’t cook a piece of chicken on a barbecue without giving everybody food poisoning.