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.