I really, really hate Fear.

Fear is B-I-G in my family – actually, not my family, being as I’ve sired a son and daughter of my own, but my father’s family – he and my mother and my brother and myself.

Our family scenario was the epitome of Upstairs/Downstairs, except there was no-one Upstairs.

I didn’t notice this too much as a boy. It was explained to me it was important that ‘I knew my place’, especially in front of others, my place being invariably at the back.

However, as a teenager I travelled a lot – anything to get away from home. No relative was too obscurely connected, or too distant not to warrant a visit and, whenever I could wangle it, I went to London. It was there that I realised Fear had, my nuts well and truly harpooned.

To give you a rough idea – although I walked down it whenever I got the opportunity, I daren’t attempt to enter any shop in Bond Street, OR any hotel, OR any posh looking department store – ‘posh’ being defined as having a doorman.

My Fear of entering these places I never attempted to respond to rationally. It was more like it was something instinctive, like self-preservation. I trudged around under the impression that, if I were to attempt, to enter say, Harrods, the earth would open, nauseous fumes would attack my nostrils rendering me speechless, even as I fell to some hellish centre of the earth, fried to an overdone steak as I… well, you get the picture.

But, very recently I experienced an incredible triumph over fear; I repeat, a major triumph.

I was in a very strange mood – in London this was. I’d been in a department store to kill some time and spotted a pair of Speedos of which I’m still a keen user when I’m on vacation, not because I have a body like Tom Daley (though my abs. are still visible occasionally) but because I’m a Yorkshireman, so I like to play the awkward cuss, especially if I’m amongst Southerners, and more and more these days when I suspect most guys are scared shitless to actually admit they’ve a knob.

Anyway, having seen the Speedos I learned, on enquiry that they were available for two hundred and thirty fuckin’ pounds. Got that? Two hundred and thirty pounds – for a pair of Speedos. I left the store incensed, not because I couldn’t afford them (though I can’t) but at the insanity of living in a world where there are folks in London who have this kind of money whilst there are millions of folks all over the place without food, water, sanitation – you know what I mean.

A few minutes later, due to some roadworks, I found myself in a sort of pedestrian-jam. It was outside one of those posh hotels my kind of person is not allowed to enter for reasons explained above (the earth moving and stuff). But there attached to the railings, which I’d always presumed were there to protect those inside from those outside (like yours truly) there was a lunch menu indicating the food on offer inside at the restaurant of a celebrity chef.

I don’t know how I did it, but I did. I went inside, handed over my overcoat and briefcase and requested a table for one. For lunch. At first the young lady pointed at a table I was just about to fall over, it being so close to the door, but you won’t believe this – I declined it, and pointed to a table in the far distant. (It was a BIG restaurant.) My request was quickly granted and, to keep this short, I was promptly served three courses of the most excellent food, the quantity, as I’ve learned to expect, being small, of a Quality which was high. And anyway, it was so rich in flavor that as my mother would’ve said, y’don’t need a lot.

And, I’m here to tell you, the earth did not open up and swallow me into the hot place.

As I left the posh hotel I hovered by the door a few extra seconds as if to give the impression I was awaiting the chauffer and I was suddenly overcome with a sort of dizzying pride in myself.

‘Up Yours, Fear!’ I said to myself.

My parents wouldn’t have been impressed; they’d’ve been uncomfortable seeing me stand there, but when I told my two children they both smiled, and my daughter said – and this is without a word of a lie – ‘y’know who you have to thank for that. Daddy? It’s because of What Men Do.’

And I reckon she was right.