I had a rather puzzling experience last week which, at

the time, seemed very minor – just a thing that happened – but has, over the past few days, refused to shake itself from my mind.

I was at the local branch of M&S grabbing a (rather disappointing) sandwich. I wasn’t particularly looking for anything mind blowing – which was lucky as I don’t

think such a thing exists in these pre-packed, largely soggy, ‘meals’ – rather I was in need of fuel and it happened to be the shop I was passing.

But as I was looking what was on offer (I admit I was more focused

on what was the cheapest than what looked the

nicest) I was suddenly, and rather rudely, barged out of the way. I turned to look at what this battering ram was, fully prepared to voice my feelings on their eyesight. What I saw left me very bemused.

This wasn’t some ‘busy-busy’ guy thinking his lack of time means he is more important; this wasn’t a mother struggling with a pram; this wasn’t a little old lady with no control over her balance; this wasn’t a toddler running around unattended – all of these I could probably accept.

What I saw when I turned around was, however, a member of the shop’s staff who seemed completely oblivious to what had happened and was now proceeding to tidy the sandwich shelf.

Let me repeat that: tidy the sandwich shelf. Not re-stock the sandwich self. Tidy.

If it had been re-stocking I possibly could have understood it – a shop needs to sell stuff to make money and if the stuff isn’t there to sell then they don’t make money. Simple.

But this was merely tidying. Not that the shelf was particularly messy, which made it even more bemusing as it really just looked like they were moving sandwiches around to pass the time.

Ok, so this all sounds very mundane and humdrum – which is exactly what I thought at the time. But then I got thinking….who was the tidying for?

It clearly wasn’t an act of Caring for the customer as I (the customer) had been pushed out of the way, therefore making the tidying the priority, not the customer.

So the only other thing it could be is filling time.

Whether this role of ‘filling time’ is actually this guy’s job title and part of M&S store policy, I have no idea. But I couldn’t help think that this guy needs to have a think about Purpose. If you’re in a job which regularly involves you ‘filling time’ then you need to get out because it most likely means it is lacking in any kind of Purpose.

Ok, so maybe he hates his job and is just doing it to support his family, put himself through Uni. or buy himself an apartment. But if that is the case the surely Caring shouldn’t go out of the window.

Caring is the key to a Life with Purpose. Without it, you’re just filling in time.

As we all have a limited amount of it then why stick with something that wastes it away?

Last week I had the pleasure of taking a trip on our wonderful public transport – or ‘the peasant wagon’ as a bus driver friend of mine calls it. Luckily, the previous occupant of my seat had left a copy of the Metro newspaper, with which I whiled away my journey.

On this particular Thursday it’s regular ‘Five Questions For…’ article was an interview with Dustin Hoffman, and he used a phrase I’ve never heard before

but which I have now fallen in love with. He talked about ‘living your dash’.

The meaning behind this phrase is this: when you’ve popped your clogs they put two dates on your gravestone – the date on which you were born, and the date on which you died. Between these two figures is a dash. This dash represents your Life.

Of course this is nothing new – it’s just a rehash of the well known ‘life is short’ and ‘you only live once’ ethos. This idea is one that gets a lot of play in the WMD Guide and so it may appear as though I am merely repeating something that we’ve already discussed at length. But I think there’s something in this phrase which sums the idea up much better than any other we’ve used.

Picture your own gravestone. Obviously, unless you’re of a particularly morbid disposition (or, some may say, well prepared), this is something you will never actually see in real in life. But just try to see that image.

Imagining it from top to bottom, you first have your name. Under that are the dates as mentioned earlier, and beneath that are a string of platitudes that tell the world you were a loving father, grandfather, brother, son, husband, etc, etc. Out of all the scribblings on this monument to your existence, the only thing that really represents your Life – everything that makes you, you – is a little dash maybe an inch long.

When thought of in these terms your Life is merely a glorified scratch. If that’s not enough to make you

shit yourself into a realisation of the fleeting nature of the human experience then I don’t know what is.

Ok, so far this all sounds very depressing. If this is all Life amounts to then what can we possibly achieve. The answer? Anything.

Because in What Men Do terms, this sets us a challenge. The Purpose of our Lives is to make our dash the most significant inch of stone that has ever existed. Ok, so it’s only an inch long… but how deep is it? Is it merely a shallow scratch or

does it look more like a gaping canyon explored to the full?

Death may be a taboo subject but it is inevitable – that’s why it’s a dash not a line. And worrying what the date at the end of the dash will say is as futile as trying to change the date at the beginning of it.

So we concentrate on the dash and make sure that not a millimetre of it is wasted. And the truth is that if your dash is one bursting with Purpose (not to mention depth), you’ll probably find it has the result of pushing the last date a bit further away.

Out of interest I Googled the phrase (other search engines are available) and came across a poem written by Linda Ellis which ends:

So, when your eulogy is being read,
with your life’s actions to rehash…
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent your dash?

Well…would you?

So ‘Stepping up to the Plate’ is obviously an Americanism, but due to the international nature of What Men Do (and Balls) we decided to go with it over, ‘Putting ‘em on the Block’, and a silly one about cricket. But the meaning is the same: In this case it means to move into position to hit the ball. In life terms it means to take responsibility for doing something.

And for some guys, ‘Stepping Up’ is paralysing.

A presentation to your boss; taking one of the penalties in a shoot-out; plucking up the courage to tell someone you want to be ‘more than friends’ – all of these require you to drop any protective armour and stand vulnerable to a counter attack.

So, maybe a drop of ‘Dutch Courage’ can help with some confidence issues…

…although it’s probably best not to take a gulp before a big meeting, and I’m not sure how the ref’ would take you boozing mid-game (though the Halifax Town fans would certainly love you for it).

So why do some guys shy away from stepping-up? What is it that’s stopping them? Well, ultimately it’s Fear.

You envisage a worst-case scenario; some kind of Dr Pepper ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ moment plays out in your head. Your voice goes squeaky, sweat showers from the pits, your pants fall down and everyone in the room hates you for what you’ve said.

Sound familiar?

Of course it does, we’ve all been there. It’s all too easy to only think of the bad stuff. Which is all bollocks by the way. No one will ever hate you for trying. They might think your idea sucked, or your presentation needed work… but that’s about it.

But in this situation a more worthwhile use of your imagination is not to picture the worst-case scenario if you do step-up, but rather what will happen if you don’t.

Missing out on something you want to do because you are worried about the outcome is self-sabotage. By holding yourself back, you’re stunting your potential for growth.

Think about it. You turn down the opportunity to speak at the meeting and the guy who volunteers goes down a storm. Who’s your boss going to ask next time?

If you don’t pluck up the courage to ask someone out then, inevitably, someone else will.

And if you don’t step-up to take the penalty, despite knowing you can do it, you’re merely displacing the pressure on to one of your teammates…and setting them up to be the Hero instead of you.

Sure, once in a while you will have a swing and a miss, get knocked-back, or fluff your lines. But guess what – those guys who you thought would laugh or mock you will probably just say ‘bad luck’ and life goes on.

Not only that but, if you’re savvy, you’ll learn from each attempt. You’ll be bigger for it and your potential for future growth will expand. The opposite can be said for missing out as you’ll only beat yourself up more and for longer for passing up your opportunity than you would have, had you done it and ‘failed’.

There’s

not much more of a bitter taste than that of regret. And the more you let someone else take your moment in the spotlight, the more your regrets will pile up.

Men don’t build regrets.

Men step-up.

It seems to me that when gauging the strength of a Friendship, what is not said is as important, if not more so, than what is said.

I’m not talking about the subtext of a conversation here, although that is important – the ability to understand what your Friend is telling you even when they struggle to articulate it is a vital element of Friendship.

What interests me, though, are the moments when you are with a close Friend and neither of you say anything – complete silence.

With a true Friend these aren’t awkward silences – it isn’t that you’ve run out of things to talk about it’s just that, for that moment, each other’s presence is all that is required. There is a kind of unexplainable aura between you which brings joy to the heart and helps to recharge your batteries (soul, spirit, cockles, whatever you want to call it).

The fact that you’re with him and he with you is all that is important – words are superfluous.

I suspect this is a predominately male experience of Friendship.

From what I’ve seen and gained from discussing this with the fairer sex, it seems that for them the comfort and intimacy of a friendship comes from the conversation.

In a male Friendship, it is each other’s presence that is important.

This is particularly obvious if you haven’t seen each other for a while. As soon as you are back in each other’s presence and the aura makes itself known – true Friendship being in the realms of Sensing and Feeling Man – then the period of absence is irrelevant. What happened since you last saw each other is barely a distant vision, as now you’re in ‘Man Time’.

I suspect this may be a remnant of the Hunting Band – when you were part of the

team killing the Bison for dinner you couldn’t talk to each other for fear of startling lunch, and so you learned to sense where your fellow Hunters were and the aura of their presence provided the comfort that you were not hunting alone.

This bond – which can only be Sensed between the two people it connects – is often the reason for a Friendship to be formed. Often with truly close Friends it is difficult to articulate

why you are so close or how that came to be – particularly in those occasions where the bond is instant and immediately close. It is not unlike falling in Love – and indeed it is a form of that, with the sexy bits removed.

This bond is clear from the words of Michel de Montaigne when discussing the subject of his Friendship with Etienne de la Boetie (who had by this point popped his clogs). His only reasoning was: “Because it was him: because it was me.”

I’ve been reading a lot of historical stuff recently… and one thing which hit me was the extent to which Friendship was a part of a guy’s Life way back when.

And this wasn’t merely at the level of guys with whom you had a regular game of golf, but on whom you actually relied – quite often for your life.

The hand-to-hand fighting of the Ancient Greeks and the Roman Legions employed the back-to-back system whereby, because of

its physical nature, the other guy was actually covering 180° of your body; he ‘gave you his back’.

Not being a soldier myself I don’t know if the marines still have use for this – it seems very dated in today’s world of rapid gunfire….

…not to mention those flying things…..

…but thinking about this prompted me to take a looksee at what’s written in the ‘What Men Do’ Guide under the ‘Friendship’ heading, and ‘wow!’ this element of one-to-one bonding has played a helluva contribution in the past lives of others.

But today? Well, no. For most guys it doesn’t seem to rate overmuch; in fact for some, the Social Network sites seem to offer what they are happy to consider adequate under what they think of as a Friendship.

There was a piece in the ‘Times’ on April 10^th that had a headline, ‘Friends are happier and laugh more without social networks’.

Well whadyaknow!

It prompted the immediate thought that common sense would seem

to be a lost (human) art these days. Do we really require research by Sam Roberts, senior lecturer at the University of Chester to undertake ‘a series of more than 300 interviews with ‘heavy users of Facebook’ to report that social media failed to cut the mustard against face to face meetings?

My biggest gripe though is that some university boffins are so out of touch with reality that they should be attempting to compare two human areas which were not actually comparable.

What is classifiable as ‘human’ via the internet is a measurable reality understood only by Thinking Man. Let’s say, they’re connections of the brain.

But real human contact activates Feeling Man and Sensing Man. They provide the instinctive response to the animal within us and the guys with whom we would Trust on patrol in the jungle….or on the battlefield.

The best you can ever achieve via social networks in knowledge – that commodity you acquire from formal education. But Friendship is based on inner knowledge, a visceral response in the guts which provides the true measure of Trust.

For about four months I’ve been suffering with a hernia. Two hernias actually.

The one on the right is small, or so I’m told.

But the leftie? I have an aversion to exclamation points but believe me this leftie requires several. It’s a real mother, and trying not to appear a wuss in public is sapping my determination to tough it out. The pain is truly excruciating and it gets worse as the day goes on. Levering myself into bed, well, my enemies would salivate to witness it.

But there’s also another problem with hernias – or at least there is with mine; they make you cock-conscious. Although it’s not part of the problem – at least I don’t think so – your dick’s proximity to the action makes it seem like a leading player.

And cock-consciousness is not good for me. It may not be an issue for most guys, but it is for me. I’ve always been cock-conscious – and I’m mainly talking about my own.

If it’s an issue with other guys, well, I don’t know about that. I mean, you can’t go around asking ‘in a very general sense, would you describe yourself as constantly cock-conscious?’ can you? That’s unless you’ve got a card from the Government or some Uni. that confirmed you were doing a Sociological Survey for the National Health (say).

And I know where my cock-consciousness started; it was with my Grandma. Due to some family problems I had to live some early years with my Grandparents. The toilet was part of the bathroom. I remember the room quite distinctly as, in additional to the basic facilities, there was a chair with a cushion covered with an attractive moquette. I suspect I remember it well because it was a very unhappy time for me and when I took a leak or did a dump (or whatever you call a 3 year old having a shit) I would speak to a ‘friend’ on the chair.

So imagine it; I’m a 3 year old whose feet don’t touch the ground when I’m sitting there, and one day in walks Grandma. And she sits on the chair watching me. ‘You’ve been a long time’, she says, like I’m an unusually early wanker.

And then, presumably to ‘help’, she came over and gave my itsy-bitsy pee-pee a shake.

I can’t remember what happened after that, but the experience stuck with me big time; it’s made me cock-conscious every waking moment since … perhaps a slight exaggeration….

…and even as it was happening I was aware that it was going to have a deeper significance, like I was being scarred in some way.

It wasn’t only a sense of indignity I suffered – that’s if ‘indignity’ can be applied to a 3 year old – but an awareness that in touching my cock, particularly the way she dismissively wiggled it around, she’d violated the essence of who I was.

And still am.

From time to time since then my cock has been in the hand(s) of others – with rare exceptions of the female gender – but there’s no doubt in my mind it was Grandma who opened the abyss.

And now

with the fucking hernia hovering there’s no longer the occasional ecstasy; only agony.

In Life terms, we reckon there’s no better measure than Self Respect.

And most guys seem to have very little of it.

This lack stems from a basic unwillingness to cut themselves off from being one of the crowd; in other words, to see themselves as a man who thinks and acts for

himself.

Or, as it explains in the WMD Guide, a man who is genuinely ‘Cool’.

And on a point of clarification, are the passing showbiz icons who enjoy popular adulation for a time ‘Cool’?

Is Justin Bieber Cool? Well,

what do you think?

Rather, passing idols like Bieber personify a kind of wish-fulfilment of Jack and Jill Average. Without knowing Justin, our suspicion is that as a man, he probably lacks integrity; what we see as an image is merely an appearance, one which, in WMD terms, lacks Balls.

Another issue working against Self Respect is that is isn’t dependant on what most guys require to know that they exist – an audience.

I had an experience in Halifax a few days ago which provided me with a ‘flash’ image of the sort of picture that’s all too easy to envisage. As I approached the town from the West I suddenly became aware that I was alone. No traffic, no pedestrians (other than myself), no noise. It was a moment of sudden strangeness, a rare instant that never happens other than in the very early hours.

It was the kind of scene that, to a sensitive soul, could trigger a bout of Depression, and the Fear of his Aloneness.

There’s a growing opinion amongst both scientist and philosophers that, right now technology is ahead of our human power to handle it wisely – as our servants – rather than to hand over our personal responsibility to it, all in the name of ‘having an easier Life’.

But an ‘easier Life’ is an oxymoron; there’s no such thing. Yes, you can have an ‘easy existence’, but there’s nothing ‘easy’ about Life, or if there is, well, it’s for the briefest of time.

Life is mainly about Struggle, essentially to grow, and to set an example. You can’t do more than that – set an ‘example’. That’s what ‘Cool’ guys do.

The American philosopher, Thoreau, wrote, ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’.

In short, no Balls; no Self Respect.

A couple of days ago one of my two fellow writers informed me that it was mid-April last year when we published the What Men Do Guide.

We’d been working on it for five and a half years and I have the scars to prove it.

The mid-April date was also when we issued the first WMD blog, a labour of … well, if not Love, at least of Caring.

Let me back up for a moment to explain to any fairly new readers how the What Men Do Movement came about – the Guide was originally conceived as a ‘spoof’ idea to be included in the regular programme of a Youth Theatre here in Yorkshire. It was nicked from ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’, which had been a surprise publishing hit at that time.

However, around that time

there were a couple of tragic suicides of young guys here in Halifax – quite separate occurrences which brought the ‘spoof’ idea to a sudden halt. Hell, we thought, it wasn’t a piss-take local teenage lads required but quite the opposite; lacking a live-in father in all too many cases, and

the town regularly full of females who’d got a bad dose of Women’s Lib and were playing it to the hilt (particularly on Friday and Saturday nights) it was clear that many local lads – every one a ‘tough Yorkshireman’ – were in fact anything but.

This situation happened to coincide with something of which I’d become increasingly convinced (a bit of a personal hobbyhorse, I admit) that there was an increasing discrepancy between who a guy actually was, versus the way he actually appeared to the wider world – and appearance was winning the battle.

That’s when we three Yorkshiremen decided to write a serious Guide that would help to explain the ‘Aloneness’ which is an inherent part of being a guy and which you become aware of in your late teens.

In the course of the five and a half years leading up to the publication in April last year it also became apparent that, whilst the Guide was directly aimed at lads in their late or mid teens – to the extent that it was decided profits from the Guide are to be donated to Charities offering guidance and services to young men – it was actually a healthy reminder for

older guys who were still in touch with the ‘teenage rebel within’ (a phrase coined and much beloved by one of my fellow writers).

Naïve fool that I turned out to be, I’d been working my tush off on the Guide under the impression that once it was published I could start hunting for serious sex again…if you get my drift.

And it was only then that I heard the word ‘Movement’ being included after ‘What Men Do’. Hence the weekly blog to which I was requested to make the occasional contributions.

Subsequently I’ve tried to do just that.

As to what I’ve written, obviously I’m pleased with some of it … and what I try to do is reveal what I’m actually like – the invisible me (bugger my ‘Appearance’).

I’m not a wuss although I’ve always tried to avoid getting into fights; my life experience has shown me that my balls have more

resilience than what most guys have to offer.

Fear is the element of Life that I despise most of all; Caring I try to embrace whenever I can. These are the themes underlying what I’ve tried to write about when it was my turn to ‘put out’.

The truth is, I’ve learned a lot about myself whilst I’ve been attempting to communicate with other guys via the WMD blog.

What was it the Ancient Greeks used to preach about – that you must first ‘Know Thyself’ if you want to learn how to help others.

So my gut feeling is that I’ve not been pissing in the wind.

I’ve been trying to work out the difference between a tool and a machine … and in particular, how to classify a camera.

Historically, the Luddites, who caused ructions against machinery way back, were pissed off because they could see, or claimed to be able to see, that these new-fangled contraptions which could do the equivalent work of ten men, and could do it faster, would pose a major threat to the livelihood of those, say, weaving and spinning by the existing hand-powered methods. The arrival of steam power made the old ways obsolete.

Since the Fourteenth Century this mechanisation process has been in continuous development with the result of today’s mass production.

But I’ve had a thought. Mass production produces itself for the mass, both of which – people or product –

can be measured. They’re both examples of what you get in an age of quantity.

But there’s still such a thing as Quality, and I don’t mean in this context something which is inherently expensive or valuable in monetary terms. Surely what most clearly separates Quality from quantity is that quantity can be measured; Quality can’t. Quality can only be perceived.

I reckon to learn how to recognise Quality – be it the talents of a group of musicians, the virtues of a mate, or the lines emanating from a piece of sculpture – is what a real Education is all about.

It’s because what passes for ‘education’ (small ‘e’) in most schools doesn’t even consider the existence of what you might call the ‘Quality level of Life’ that lads leave school and are only able to recognise what they’re stuck with, it being the ‘mass mentality’.

What I’m wondering is to what extent it might help a lad to draw himself away from this if he has to use tools to enhance what he does, what he’s trying to achieve – which, let’s hope, is something which embraces Quality, even if it only concerns his Dad’s old banger.

And if, by his skill and ingenuity – plus his tools – he gets the car working again, can’t I claim that as a ‘Quality repair’?

Truth to tell, I’m getting a bit lost in what passes for my thinking. It gets me narked from time to time though the negative feelings never last long.

With or without tools, Struggle holds no fear for me. Lacking what I think of as a Quality education, it strikes me that Struggle is an inevitable part of my existence if I persist in trying to live where Quality reigns.

Machines and their mass produced ‘other’ hold no appeal for me.

I’ve always had this secret desire to be a ‘big player’.

Of course I realise this isn’t anything to brag about. If you want to be a ‘big player’ in the modern world you must have, or appear to have loads of dosh – dosh being the only recognisable currency that carries check with the kinds of folks who’re impressed by a ‘big player’.

The point is, you have to have dosh to splash around when the opportunities present themselves.

In Halifax, where I live and work for a small charity, I’m such a ‘small player’ I’ve spent the winter wearing odd gloves. The cashier at the bank noticed it on Friday so I suspect that’s the end of my AAA rating with Barclays.

But in Egypt things are different.

For years I’ve taken my annual hols. there, and because of my ‘habit’ the Egyptians think I’m a rich man. Wow, if only they knew….

…but they don’t, so my desire to be seen as a ‘big player’ is already out of my psychic fantasies the moment I arrive, tipping ‘big’ to the porter as he carries my suitcases on arrival, meanwhile muttering in broken English, ‘welcome back’. At least I think it’s ‘welcome back’.

We always stay at the same hotel. The first time we visited, I noticed a small ledge in the rocks, alongside the Nile, just above where the boats are moored to be hired by the hour.

As a result, the second time we arrived I went along to the pool attendant to ask if he’d mind bringing a couple of sunbeds to the ledge along with the towels. However, he refused, saying we’d have to sit by the pool alongside the other ‘eeengleesh’.

What neither of us realised was that whilst this conversation was taking place, we were observed and overheard by the old guy who’s in charge of the boats from whom there then poured out what sounded like the very worst curses of Allah with the immediate effect that sunbeds, parasols, tables and towels magically appeared on the ledge.

Each year we get more and more

attention, the effects of my outrageously generous bakh’shish obviously having its effect….or so I surmised…

But it was the almost psychic level of intercommunication that first alerted me to the real truth. Not once has the hotel manager or one of his suited minions ever acknowledged my presence there. It’s the old boss at the boats that calls the operational shots – and why? Because the entire operation staff are all his

nephews.

As a result, when I leave, bakh’shish is handed to and generously accepted by the three department heads, waiters of note, the guy who makes the bed, the guy who empties the ash-tray whenever I sit in the lobby (which I don’t use), the porters, the musicians who welcome our arrival and departure, the guy who I witness fondling the hashish pipes (which I don’t use), the old woman who makes the bread (which I don’t eat), two security guards who protect me from potential kidnappers – (for

my wealth) – plus the four boat boys (which I don’t use), plus, of course, the old guy himself who gets a two hundred note (that’s worth around £20).

This year I worked out that the total of the bakh’shish was greater than the hotel bill.

And barely had I sat on the ledge this year before a new nephew appeared, dressed in spotless white sports gear, and introduced himself as the newly appointed hotel masseur.

‘Would Sir care for a rub down?

Well, what ‘big player’ could ever say ‘no’ to a rub down?