We men, having given over our houses to our wives, girlfriends and womenfolk, are defined by our one last place that we can truly call our own...... The Man Drawer.
We don't require very much, Just one drawer – this is the man drawer. We eventually spot an unused drawer in the house and we casually ask our partner,
“Are you using that drawer for anything dear?” Then we have it, our very own place for general domestic maintenance items and everything else we think we may need in the future.
Light-bulbs. Should a light-bulb within the home blow, the man will search his man drawer. He will have a selection of bayonets fitting bulbs in various wattage. And even though every light fitting in the house takes the bayonet bulb, man will have a small selection of screw fitting bulbs there too.
We will fill this drawer with batteries of undetermined life. We are unable and incapable of throwing a battery away. The remote may stop working, where we will search our man drawer and test the plethora of triple A's that are in the man drawer until we find 4 that work. What do we do with the old and seemingly dead batteries, we put them back in the man drawer. We will actually be heard telling our womenfolk that we may be able to ooze a little more life out of them if we mix them with good ones. We have even been known to carefully place old batteries under the pillow at night, wrapped in a couple of socks, because our dads told us this would fetch a little more life from them. So worry no longer woman, next time you find a sock under your man's pillow stuffed with batteries. It is not a weapon.
We will hoard all our instruction guides in the man drawer. Even after the appliance has long broken and been discarded, the instructions will be safely maintained in our man drawer, sometimes in alphabetical order. It will get so full that we will need a flat sided tool to open it when it has wedged shut from all the old and useless instruction guides. Where is this special tool, it's in our man drawer of course. We will have the instruction guide to our 1988 Argos toaster in there. Even though it was discarded in 1994.
Foreign currency. That goes in the man drawer. Should Greece ever leave the Euro and I will be able to immediately buy milk in Corfu. If men all emptied their man drawers we could probably create a rescue package for Greece should they leave the Euro.We will have spare change from every European city that we have visited. Even though they now use the Euro we will have Pesetas, Drachma, Francs and Centavos to name a few. All of which must be kept in the man drawer.
The next thing that you will find in the man drawer is keys. Even keys from houses we have not lived in for ten years will be there. Keys we have never seen. We can happily throw away and old and broken lock, but we are incapable of throwing away the key. We secretly want to attach them all to a big bunch and hang them from a chain which is attached to our waistband allowing the keys to sit in our pocket.
The master of all man keys in the man drawer, the pinnacle of masculinity is actually the smallest key; the radiator bleeding key. A job that only man thinks he can do. Almost more important than cooking sausages on a BBQ. We even bleed radiators for fun. The boiler blows up, We start by bleeding the radiator. We call out the gas engineer and while he is carefully taking the cover from the boiler, we inform him that we have bled the radiators, nodding our heads casually. Holding our hands up in sheer exasperation that this has not worked.
We will regularly circumnavigate our house feeling each radiator for minuscule areas that may be a degree lower than the rest of the radiator. Radiator bleeding key in hand, just in case.
We don't require very much, Just one drawer – this is the man drawer. We eventually spot an unused drawer in the house and we casually ask our partner,
“Are you using that drawer for anything dear?” Then we have it, our very own place for general domestic maintenance items and everything else we think we may need in the future.
Light-bulbs. Should a light-bulb within the home blow, the man will search his man drawer. He will have a selection of bayonets fitting bulbs in various wattage. And even though every light fitting in the house takes the bayonet bulb, man will have a small selection of screw fitting bulbs there too.
We will fill this drawer with batteries of undetermined life. We are unable and incapable of throwing a battery away. The remote may stop working, where we will search our man drawer and test the plethora of triple A's that are in the man drawer until we find 4 that work. What do we do with the old and seemingly dead batteries, we put them back in the man drawer. We will actually be heard telling our womenfolk that we may be able to ooze a little more life out of them if we mix them with good ones. We have even been known to carefully place old batteries under the pillow at night, wrapped in a couple of socks, because our dads told us this would fetch a little more life from them. So worry no longer woman, next time you find a sock under your man's pillow stuffed with batteries. It is not a weapon.
We will hoard all our instruction guides in the man drawer. Even after the appliance has long broken and been discarded, the instructions will be safely maintained in our man drawer, sometimes in alphabetical order. It will get so full that we will need a flat sided tool to open it when it has wedged shut from all the old and useless instruction guides. Where is this special tool, it's in our man drawer of course. We will have the instruction guide to our 1988 Argos toaster in there. Even though it was discarded in 1994.
Foreign currency. That goes in the man drawer. Should Greece ever leave the Euro and I will be able to immediately buy milk in Corfu. If men all emptied their man drawers we could probably create a rescue package for Greece should they leave the Euro.We will have spare change from every European city that we have visited. Even though they now use the Euro we will have Pesetas, Drachma, Francs and Centavos to name a few. All of which must be kept in the man drawer.
The master of all man keys in the man drawer, the pinnacle of masculinity is actually the smallest key; the radiator bleeding key. A job that only man thinks he can do. Almost more important than cooking sausages on a BBQ. We even bleed radiators for fun. The boiler blows up, We start by bleeding the radiator. We call out the gas engineer and while he is carefully taking the cover from the boiler, we inform him that we have bled the radiators, nodding our heads casually. Holding our hands up in sheer exasperation that this has not worked.
We will regularly circumnavigate our house feeling each radiator for minuscule areas that may be a degree lower than the rest of the radiator. Radiator bleeding key in hand, just in case.Every time we build a piece if Ikea furniture we carefully place the Allen keys in the man drawer. A sort of trophy of the magnificent work of art we have assembled. We believe that one day we just might need to take it apart and put it back together. We instantly forget that we have glued all the doweling together. We hold a firm conviction that somehow, someday, we will need this Allen key again. Our manhood can be summarised to how many no4 Allen keys a man has. Man can regularly be heard discussing epic events of carpentry skills involving using an Allen key, sometimes with pliers, for that extra half turn.
“Let's have Chinese” my wife may say. Immediately I saunter to my man drawer and produce the take away menu. We read this carefully and ponder the choices and then have the same thing we have had for the last ten years. But we must keep a menu for every fast food restaurant in a five mile radius, in our man drawer. This is man's job. We even have menu's from take-aways that have been shut down for ten years because you never know.
Finally, the last items that man keeps in his man drawer. Old mobile phones, chargers and leads. We may one day feel the need to make a phone call using our old Nokia 3210. This is important to man. If he does not have at least one old mobile phone and two chargers he is only half man.
We have cables left over from electrical appliances that we have never used. They go in the man drawer. If it is connected to a plug and fits something, then we must keep it. We have cables that end with red and yellow and white jacks. The televisions do not appear to need them. We must keep anything that has any likelihood of allowing electricity to flow down it, in the man drawer. If it connects to a computer it can never be discarded. Womenfolk be sure that is not because we do not know what the cable is for. It is because we have not yet discovered what it is for. We know if we throw it away the Man Gods Will look down on us with disdain. Computer cables must always go in the man drawer.
We can not put any item that resembles currency, connects to an electrical item or can be used to construct something in the dustbin. This would be similar to woman throwing out those clothes that no longer fit and never will. There is always a chance.
We can not put any item that resembles currency, connects to an electrical item or can be used to construct something in the dustbin. This would be similar to woman throwing out those clothes that no longer fit and never will. There is always a chance.
This my friends is our man drawer. Soon I will explain more about the other area of life that only man can control. The loft. The place that we believe is too dangerous for you. We demote you to passer upper if you are lucky.
As a single woman, I know the joys of the man'dy' drawer. I also get to put my own clothes that don't fit YET into the loft myself.
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