Bunning's has just opened down the road.

Not far from our current house sit a huge, brand spanking new Bunning’s has just opened.

There is something special about Bunning’s. All us girls know that an Aussie Bloke is not much of a bloke unless he has his ‘shed’. Well, Bunning’s is just a bigger version of the ‘blokes shed’, and I think generally speaking is the material centre of every bloke’s universe.

Us girls potter in the kitchen. Our pottering is productive, about 1,000 meals a  year and about the same number of snacks. A man will potter in his shed. His productivity is usually less though, perhaps replacing the lawn mower blades, or counting the nails and screws in the jars.

Us girls might browse around the dress shops, open and close a few handbags and potter around the bling. A man will plan his trip to Bunning’s with precision, allowing plenty of time to research the necessary information, measure and write down his requirements, and double check with the wife that he has got it right. Then, filled with anticipation, he will enter the sacred aisles and work his way from one end of the massive building to the other, comparing, contemplating and checking prices. He will drool unashamedly over the tools, check out the paint charts, make sure no new model of the Dutch hoe has been invented since his last visit, spend quite some time deciding if he needs a stake for the tomatoes, (no he doesn’t need one, he hasn’t planted any tomatoes) then investigate the storage section to see what’s new.

Once the preliminaries are over, he will get down to the serious business of buying what he came down for. He gets out his little piece of paper, and heads off to the appropriate section. This area needs particular skill, because the variety is enormous and he must get exactly what he wants.

After a great deal of checking and measuring, with his treasures in his hot little hands he heads off to the checkout to pay for the parsley plant or bag of nails or screws he has bought.

He knows that when he gets home he will get the third degree. “Where have you been? What took you so long? I was going to send out a search party. You know I get worried if you are gone for hours and I don’t know where you are. I thought you must have run off with some floozy” . . .etc.

In an injured voice only a man can put on when he is guilty of some misdemeanour, he lets us know it was our fault, we wanted the shelf fixed, or a screw put in  here or there, or a new parsley plant. He knows, and we know that he already has 25 jars of assorted nails and screws in his shed, but we give a little smile and tell him how good he is to keep the house well maintained.

Of course, he knows, and we know, that we are pleased to get him out of the house for a few hours, so we can watch a chick-flick and he can feel useful. I’m sure I’ll think of something I’ll need done next weekend.

Oh, and by the way, I’m not averse to picking up the odd pot plant either.