I think I prefer the lilac throw....Even as I registered the words coming out of my mouth, I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing.

My days off, my quiet time, the time to recharge my batteries and here I was being dragged around a succession of show homes, all wildly outside our price range, safe in the knowledge that I had no intention whatsoever of moving house.

Into an ensuite here, a master bedroom there, a conservatory here, a reception room there, all the time getting more and more detached from reality, until, "I think I prefer the lilac throw". Fuuucccckkk! This calls for drastic action. At this rate I'll be watching Mama Mia by the end of the week.

My mind darted instantly to the scene in Fight Club -

"It's a blanket, just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. What are we then? We're consumers. We're by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty - these things don't concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guy's name on my underwear."

Click, click. The pieces fell into place. The cogs turned and I finally understood. Modern life, a series of processes leading to the emasculation of men. To rob millions of their essential masculinity. To deny them the right to engage in purely male pursuits, in the company of other men.

I'm not talking about anything homo-erotic here, I have no desire to try my hand in a spot of man love, although I did once buy a Pet Shop Boys album. If that's what floats your boat good luck to you, consenting adults permitting, privacy of your own home etc. Nor am I suggesting I should be able to stay down the pub till closing time every night, before staggering home to a meal on the table. Dishing out a few left and rights if 'er indoors has had the audacity not to prepare it.

It's a simple fact that blokes need to spend time, being blokes in the company of their mates.

We are constantly drip fed a diet of media dirge telling us we are not complete until we have the four bedroom executive home with ensuite, the Audi sat on the driveway outside, the 42-inch LCD flat screen on the living room wall, all tastefully furnished and decorated in a suitably understated neutral pallet. The advertising onslaught in the commercial breaks between the latest episodes of X-Factor, Britain's Got Talent, or Celebrity Jesus Christ Superstar on Ice, ramming home the message, consume, consume, consume. You will not be be complete until you have the ying yang coffee table.

Spend some time in any out-of-town shopping complex, if you can bear it. Wander round the anonymous aisles in Ikea, B and Q, Homebase, Currys, Comet, Matalan, TK Max, et al. See the grey rings round the eyes, the burgeoning waist lines, the silver hair at the temples. The dead, vacant stares. Inside we die a little every day. They know it, you know it. The architecture reflects the oppressive mood. Everywhere beginning to look the same, identikit town planning. We could be in Hemel Hempstead, Skelmersdale, Warrington, Telford, the Leeds side streets that you slip down. I wonder to myself. I ponder. Yesterday's tomorrow, a post war modernist vision, that offered so much and delivered so little. That which crushes the human spirit. Gordon and Alistair's brave new world, mortgaged to the hilt.

All this might conceivably be bearable if it stopped there, written off as an inevitable process of the free market system at work. The need to constantly relaunch, replace, replenish. To keep the capitalist wheel turning.

Unfortunately, we're also continually sold the idea we must be in touch with our emotions. Like 70's Californian "New Man" rejects, sitting round the hippie camp fire playing the bongos at a weekend retreat. Presumably having completed the twelve hour shift to support the mortgage, the loan on the Audi etc.

I'm not saying we should all be mono-syllabic hairy arsed gorillas. Seething balls of pent up rage, unable to express emotions, self medicating on alcohol to dull the pain inside. It's the current obsession with wallowing in emotion to no purpose I find particularly disagreeable. Beckham cries when he scores a goal, the contestants on Deal or No Deal cry when their own greed leaves them in the 1p club. Peter, the middle aged belly dancing drag act on Britain's Got Talent cries when Amanda and Piers vote him through to the next round. It makes you long for the days of the stiff upper lip.

Picture the scene, the heady days of summer 1940, the bell outside the dispersal hut rings as Stanmore Park scramble another squadron to meet the Nazi hordes. Thirty gerries, angels one-five, south of Reigate. On the airfield nothing moves. You can hear the irritation coming down the line from sector control.
"Winco here, what the bloody hell's going on Biffo?"
"Sorry sir, the chaps are rather browned off since we lost Algie to that 109. Whizzo and Bully have gone to occy health for some counselling, Ginger and Harry have booked some compassionate leave. Piers-Smyth's gone up to London to appear on that wireless show, Jeremy Kyle-Watson's half hour. I thought I'd get squiffy at the Dog and Duck in the village, before picking a fight with a complete stranger."

Witness the way in which a person can be branded as inhuman and uncaring if they don't partake. Remember the vitriol heaped on Kate McCann, because she did not break down publicly in front of the world's media.

The trouble is we are living in in-between times. The feminists of the late 60s and 70s wanted to destroy gender stereotypes and reshape society in a more equal democratic form. They succeeded in the first part of their vision, however we yet to clearly define what the role of the male should be in this utopia.

In the meantime I'll have to content myself with shopping for lilac throws, in between rubbing my big fat hairy cock of course.