AWKWARD SITUATIONS FOR MEN

Danny Wallace

AWKWARD SITUATIONS FOR MEN

EBURY PRESS

79 10 8

First published in 2010 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

A Random House Group company

Copyright © Danny Wallace 2010

Danny Wallace has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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INTRODUCTION

Hello. My name's Danny Wallace, and I am a man. Not just that - I've been a man all my life, and I intend to keep it up, too.

This book is, I hope, a modest attempt at capturing the incredible wonder and glorious majesty of being a man in the twenty-first century. Most of the stories are specific to me. But hopefully that means they'll somehow be specific to you as well. Whether you're a man yourself, or even if you just met one, once.

So what follows pretty much represents the story of my life over the past year-and-a-bit. A year in which I had a pint with a man I did not know. A year in which I was discovered by my wife to be a secret pyjama wearer. A year in which I was forced to eject a minor celebrity from a party, found myself naked in a shower with a stranger, turned up to places too late, turned up to places too early, was mistaken for the black film actor Danny Glover, realised I didn't know how to walk behind women at night, discovered the finest sandwich known to man, was taken for a deaf man in a chip shop, found that staring at children is frowned upon, and had a heated disagreement with a bishop.

But in among the trials and trips and stumbles and fumbles are moments of glorious triumph, too. Moments where the blushes are vanquished or the pride reinstated. Those are the moments that make our Awkward Situations for Men - mine and yours and everyone else's - something close to worthwhile.