Dan Morris: Finally, my man-cave dream realised

My free-wheeling days are now all but spent, and my destiny – whilst long avoided – has, alas, come to claim me.

Soon I shall be joining the ranks of a segment of our populace whose doors I assumed would be ever-barred – a clubhouse that I, like some pale facsimile of Oliver Twist, expected to always find beyond my reach; my arm in perpetual torment grasping toward a bowl of gruel cruelly held mere millimetres from my wide eyes, itching fingers and aching belly.

Well my friends, no longer. I wanted some more, and ‘please sir’, you have provided . . .

While having for many years prided myself on my status as something of a care-free, swashbuckling troubadour, the moment has finally arrived for me to join the so-called ‘responsible’, ‘established’ and ‘grounded’ echelons of society.

’Tis true, good folks, the whispers of the wind be right indeed. And while I never expected the sun to ever rise on such an unlikely, outlandish and nigh on absurd eventuality, the day approaches – and the sky hath not yet cracked in two.

And so, without anymore gilding of the lily, or further pomp and frivolity, I now ladies and gentlemen move to scribe the most ridiculous, bewildering and flat-out unbelievable line I have ever written for the fair publication you hold within your grip.

I, Daniel Graham Morris the Second, am about to become an ‘owner of property’ . . . and a woman has once again consented to live with me.

Stunned doesn’t begin to cut it. While the dream of actually purchasing as opposed to renting a house I had often thought tenuous, the fact that a member of the opposite sex would once again choose to cohabit with me is outright laughable.

Yet, life – as we all know – can play interesting tricks, and so here I sit, about to embark on a very different kind of adventure to those which I have grown accustomed.

The prospect of owning a property has inspired a somewhat medieval sense of pride in me that, as I regale, I had often thought I would never feel. A man’s home is his castle of course, and a castle it shall be in every true sense . . . one with a queen resolutely in charge and a king-come-court jester prancing about to little helpful avail, wondering where, perchance, he can procure a codpiece befitting of his new and most glorious station.

I joke of course, and fully intend not to be as useless a living partner as popular expectation may hold. But we all know that the brains of the outfit rest firmly encased in the cranium of my beloved, and I as a faithful peasant will be guided by her fair hand . . . and do exactly as I am told.

One of the most exciting elements of this strange and unexpected enterprise however, is that I will finally in earnest be able to indulge in that most mystical totem of male pride, and badge of honour and status that in recent times has come to dictate the pecking order of group bromances the world over.

Yes fair readers, Dan Morris will finally be constructing his own man cave.

Ah, the glorious male sanctuary that is the hallmark of laddish aspirations across the globe. When all is said and done, these are a funny old concept really. Blokes can spend their early adult life fantasising about owning their own house in order to have a man cave, only to realise that when they finally do, what they have effectively done is spend a wedge of hard-earned on four full walls and a roof for the privilege of spending their free time in a re-creation of their teenage bedroom.

But I suppose it depends on how you approach it. I’ve had a few different visions – leopard print curtains and a disco ball featuring in most of them – and luckily Chez Morris-to-be features an ideal, isolated space where my inner bad taste dork can be let out without tainting the rest of the house.

All of a sudden (despite the need to now be more sensible with the cheddar) I’ve found myself Googling magnificent yet useless items ranging from a replica Iron Man helmet to a Starsky & Hutch themed Scalextric set (actually, ‘useless’ be damned . . . that one’s way too cool to ignore).

Really I should be all over Ebay trying to track down the hedge trimmer I will desperately need, but the mind can sometimes quite easily wander.

Happily, as the saying goes, there’s plenty of time for all that. As excited as I may be about the man shack-to-be, the thing I’m really looking forward to about the new pad is building my future, and being lucky enough to have someone to build it right along with me.

I am far from being a perfect person. She is much, much closer.

While I fully intend to fashion my man cave as a temple to my inner idiot, I will build my home with the love of my life as a launching pad for all of the exciting times we have to come.

It’s going to be an incredible journey with her. I’d better get my leopard print packed for the road . . .