Boys, Girls and Instruction Manuals

The temporary office i'm in has a real window, a luxury for me. Instead of the window I'm used to which merely overlooks some women, now I've got one that looks over a car park, with forty foot lorries loading and unloading at regular intervals. There are forklift trucks doing their thing and activity of all kinds is continually going on.

There are certain boyish things that still capture me, as if were a youngster playing with my toy cars and planes and things. Aiports and planes are a constant source of fascination. My office is about five minutes from Heathrow, I spend far more time than the average person does collecting and dropping people at the airport. Yet I still love the airport. It's got an atmosphere and a feel, a buzz to it, as do all airports for me. There's something about the smell of aircraft fuel, the constant feeling of movement and the pure excitement of seeing the aircraft take off and land that never ceases to impress me.

Cars are one of my loves. I still get that butterfly feeling when I see a Ferrari Dino or hear the unique twin carbed sound of the engine in an old MGB as it trundles past me. I can recognise the tones of an old VW Beetle engine from about four miles and a glance at an Aston Martin Vantage, even though they are an essential accessory for most professional footballers here, can get me just that little bit horny, well a bit more actually.

Ships, now there's another interesting one. I think it's something about the size of them that I marvel at. The way in which these massive iron monstrosities (or whatever they're made of) are little cities in their own right. Is it only me who's constantly in awe at the way in which the containers are managed, how they are stacked and loaded and how they're moved around as if they're tiny little boxes made from cardboard. Whenever I see a forty foot container lorry I look at its size, think that it's a pretty large vehicle, then realize it's tiny in comparision to an ocean going freighter with hundreds of these containers stacked on board.

Instructions manuals are the one men's dilemna I do have though. I'm never sure what the norm is for us men. Are we the ones who are supposed to read them or are we the ones who are supposed to ignore them, only to glance through them at the very last minute, when we have tried all and are just about to give up?

My approach on the instruction manual issue is to generally read the little things before I approach the new item. Of course I don't read all the girl's stuff like where the batteries go and how to operate the power button, but I read the "how to set up and use the new universal remote control" bit before steaming ahead with useage. I wouldn't dream of reading the manual from cover to cover, of digesting every word, but I'll glance through it to get the basics sorted. But what exactly is the trend here? Do most men do this or is it the fairer and lovelier sex ( that's women to you, Java) who read manuals?

But instruction manuals, planes, trains and automobiles are all well and good. Airports, cranes and constructions sites may well be measurements of a man. Whether you read instructions or not just might give some indication. Shaving, periods, childbirth and farting might just be crucial differences between the sexes.

Ultimately there's only one foolproof way, one accurate gauge for differentiating the sexes. It's the only surefire way to tell the men from the women. I've studied it for a few years and concluded that it's true the world over, with a possible exception being Chatham in Kent.

Yes people, it's how you throw a ball. Simple, but true. Women throw like girls, men throw like boys. If you have the action of some kind of demented shotputter, where there is no backswing involved, a little grunt and a tiny distance cleared, then you're a girl. If you casually throw a cricket or tennis ball with the action of Andy Roddick serving an ace then you're a boy, complete with backspin, distance and nonchalence.

You may or may not have a willy, you may or may not be able to give birth. These things are mere details, just minor technicalities.

How you throw is the real measurement.