Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [10]
I do not believe, for example, that there is a specifically woman's view on motoring. I know some women who are as enthusiastic about motors as I am, and for the same reasons. I also know men who don't have a car at all because they think them the work of Beelzebub. Obviously these so-called 'men' are traitors to their sex, but that's the way it is.
And so to Drivesafe, a new initiative aimed at women motorists and accompanied by the inevitable 'handy pack' of helpful hints. Its authors point out that women do more town miles than men, and are therefore more at risk from threats such as road rage and car-jacking. Many of them, it is believed, lack the self-assurance needed to change a wheel. Drivesafe will show them how.
And on the face of it, that's a good thing. Men go shopping for clothes in the modern world, so it follows that women should be able to change wheels. What bothers me, however, is the suggestion that there won't be men on hand to do it for them.
If a woman suffers a puncture somewhere around town, then surely there will be a man somewhere – in another car, walking along the pavement, looking out of a window – who will put the spare on for her; a man who, denied by social development the opportunity to wear a lady's embroidered favour around his wrist as he rides into a jousting tournament against ye black knight on ye black horse, will relish the opportunity to wield the latter-day Excalibur that is the wheelbrace.
It seems not.
Cry sexist if you must, but this sort of thing really worries me. I'm not suggesting for a moment that a woman shouldn't be able to change a wheel, any more than I think some of my male friends should stop mincing around in the kitchen with tiger prawns and put some bloody shelves up. It's just that today's Guinevere of the road should be able to rely on Gawain in her moment of peril.
In any case, my quarrel is actually with the chaps. In the past few weeks I've watched three men attempt to change a wheel, and they all made a complete Horlicks of it. Cars fell off jacks, nuts were cross-threaded, and everyone had a good laugh. This is deeply symptomatic of a hideous blight affecting the modern British male; namely, that being a bit useless is perceived as being somehow endearing and 'blokeish'. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I keep meeting men who say things like 'Ha ha ha, I can't even wire a plug!' Why not? The instructions are usually moulded into the plug itself, or on a piece of paper pushed over the pins. If you can't wire a plug it's not because you are creative or because you have a left-hemisphere brain or because you're a bit of a bloke. It's because you are an imbecile.
Another man I met recently had employed a builder to screw a wine rack to the wall. Why he wants a wine rack anyway is a bit of a mystery, since he lives only a few doors from a pub that sells proper beer. Even more unfathomable is how he could bear the shame of standing by while another man drilled four holes in some brickwork and inserted some rawlplugs. He can regard himself as little more than a receptacle for keeping sperm at the right temperature until it's needed.
British men are facing a crisis. There are no world wars to fight, very little coal to be dug, no massive programme of railway expansion to feed. The forge is cold and the instruments of duelling are rusting above the fireplace in a country house experience somewhere. Poetry is unfashionable, as is serenading. Ballad-writers are noticeably thin on the ground. The attributes that once defined manliness are receding fast, already at such a low ebb that we can't even be relied upon to sort out a puncture for a distressed damsel. The roads are the last arena in which chivalry can be upheld.
I therefore wholly commend the Drivesafe initiative and in particular the handy pack that comes with it. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds as if it's full of really useful advice on, among other things, changing wheels on cars.
I therefore think it should be distributed to all males over the age of 12.
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