Gherkin Street

By Donna Dinger:

I have never understood cricket. To me, it’s just a bunch of kids throwing rocks at each other except that two of them have flat sticks to defend themselves. Oh, and about fifteen layers of padding.

Seriously, though if I asked my husband (Red) to wear a bright yellow outfit he would say no faster than if you had just asked me would I like sex with Brad Pitt. Of course, one of us would be lying.

Cricketers also change outfits for different games. They wear white for the test matches. What is that supposed to mean? The only other time wearing white is significant is when women get married. Then, it’s supposed to mean they are “pure”. Can’t exactly say the same for our beloved cricketers. Or just about any other Australian (team) sportsmen.

Nevertheless, it’s perfectly ok for a group of Australian males to stand around a BBQ discussing which year’s colourful one-day outfit was best. Show them a picture of Sophie Monk wearing only a bikini bottom and they won’t even be able to tell you what colour the bikini was. Or the colour of her eyes. Or whether she had a head.

Red reckons the love of sport goes back to men’s “hunting and gathering ancestry”. However, for Red and just about everyone of his mates the only hunting and gathering they are doing when sports are concerned is finding the best seat in front of the television and seeing how many chips they can fit into one hand (the other one is either holding a beer or scratching themselves somewhere).

Oh there are a few older friends who actually play sport. They are the ones on crutches or waiting lists for new kneecaps. Even his mates who are young enough to play sport tend to watch more than they play.

Two things are certain though, they were all legends when they played sport and they are all experts at whatever they are watching now. Red has quite a bit to say about aerial ski-jumping and yet the only time in his life he was airborne while unassisted was when he fell backwards off the balcony after too many drinks. His friends said he would have won the contest but he blew the landing.

“It’s about the contest” Red always tells me. He may just be right. For men turn everything into a contest. Everything.

Sex is about who has the longest willy and who can “go at it” the longest. Here’s a tip boys, most of your wives wish you would just get it over with as fast as possible – if only so we don’t have to look upon your so-called “game-face”.

Driving is about who can get their faster and with fewer rest stops. Funny how the reigning Sydney-Melbourne winner is now deceased. They buried him in his car. Not because he was so attached to it but because it was so attached to him.

Drinking is about how fast and how many, eating is about how much and flatulence is about how smelly. Exactly how does the latter relate to your “hunting and gathering ancestry”. I am pretty sure that nowhere in the Darwin’s theory of evolution is a suggestion that mankind is in any way related or evolved form the skunk. I find it hard to believe that sometime in our dark past did one man escape the clutches of a deadly sabre-toothed kangaroo by the use of flatulence.

Nor, I bet, did his then spouse find the smell a turn on. If it was so sexy wouldn’t someone have bottled flatulence by now? I can just imagine the svelte model staring down the TV at us saying, “Try FRT – the new fragrance for men that drives men wild.” It’s a bit hard to imagine the Lynx girls smouldering because they have just sniffed the latest “fragrance of man – two day old Indian curry and port scent”.

Yep, everything men do is just a way of seeing whether they can beat their mates. To them it’s all about who comes first and … well ... that’s all that seems matter …