[Miscellany]

Last night I was out to dinner with the girls when E brought up a cardinal sin she had made that made her husband give her the silent treatment. Hubby is a reasonable, lovely, responsible, man with a good sense of humour. He's an Aussie bloke but not in the offensive ocker manner. So she's telling the story of her downfall while I was sitting there hoping she hadn't done something too stupid - girls do stupid things all the time you see - but when she finally revealed the truth of the situation I just sat there dumbfounded.

She borrowed his best stubby holder (his bucks night stubby holder), took it to a house party and accidentally left it there. A stubby holder (for the uninitiated) is a cylindrical piece of wetsuit type material that you put around the base of a bottle of beer (a stubby) so that when you hold it;
1) your fingers don't get too cold
2) your beer doesn't get too warm.
Apparently Australians spend a lot of time with beer in hand so ..yeah it's an essential part of Aussie life. Hubby was NOT happy when he found out about this and told E in no uncertain terms that she was to get it back immediately. When her brother in law found out he also gave E a serve about it. When E brought it up at dinner last night the girls all made that ooooooooooooooooeeeerr sound that means "you're in trouble, baby".

I, was the only one who had no idea what everyone was in such a tiz about. I do realise that blokes love their stubby holders and how useful they can be when it's a cold winter night and you don't want your hand to freeze off (beer hand) but I had no idea to the depth of man-love for this simple invention! I just assumed that stubby holders were things that bogans were obsessive about but that the rest of normal society wanted to distance themselves from as much as possible (in the name of good taste). Apparently not my dear M, apparently not!

C said that her partner has a collection of stubby holders that he would never let anyone he didn't like or "trust" use and instead bring out the the cheapo ones for the plebs. L said that one bloke she knew would hide his "good" stubby holders when he was having a house party so that they wouldn't get stolen. E added that her hubby had a collection as well.

Well, blow me down with a feather. I am completely shocked about this facet of Australian bloke-land that I had no idea about.

What say you? Do you (or your bloke) have a stubby collection that they/you are obsessive about? Do stubby holders exist outside of Australia or is there some other irrational bloke thing that men in the Northern hemisphere are obsessed with? Girls, what do you think of stubby holders - Friend or fashion crime-Foe?

Labels: blokes, weird things

posted by M at 12:03 pm 27 comments