Uncomfortably incompetent (From Oxford Mail)

Uncomfortably incompetent

9:11am Friday 3rd October 2008

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I am now 30-years-old - thanks, for the card – and starting to get worried by the world.

One concern is my preference to staying in with a chicken Kiev, boil in the bag rice and a re-run of Top Gear on Dave, over a night in the pub.

Chores must be written in non-smudgeable ink on a note stapled to my head, or I am forced to make up elaborate excuses to my partner as to why I haven’t paid the gas bill or why the washing pongs because I left it in the machine for 17 hours.

I console myself with the thought I still don’t buy birthday cards ‘just in case’ and I am sure I will never think Crocs are acceptable footwear in public – even if it is for a trip to the supermarket and they are ‘really, comfy actually’.

My worries, however, do run a little deeper.

We are a generation of men which can knock up a lasagne ‘to die for’, but is forced to call dad when the oil needs changing in the car or a hole needs drilling.

It seems we have been de-masculinated – I call it Jamie Oliver-ed – blokes nowadays can do their own ironing, but DIY injects the fear of death into our souls.

A reason for wanting to start the allotment was to attempt to develop some useful life skills. We can only learn by mistakes.

It therefore is sensible, I think, to make mistakes on a patch of land hundreds of yards from my house.

A good example was with a borrowed petrol strimmer I used today. It took me an hour to get the thing buzzing.

But, man, when I did… the Borneo-like thicket lasted seconds as I blitzed away the grass, weeds and (by accident) a small fence. The sense of achievement was immense.

You can lean back on a post, breathe a sigh of satisfaction and say: “I destroyed that.”

And, if men are going to carry on being men, we need to carry on the bloody-minded attitude of our fathers that we don’t need help to do stuff. We can break it and patch it up on our own.