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Even though I’m a bloke, there are some typical blokey things I just don’t get.

I hate watching football in the pub, even though I’m a huge sports fan. It just doesn’t move me at all.

Cars a total mystery to me – as far as I’m concerned they’re a means to an end that get you from A to B.

And of all the male obsessions that I don’t understand is that of trainers.

I don’t mean trainers in a running round the park/gym sense, I’m talking about ‘fashion’ trainers. They’re the ones that aren’t white with a couple of flashes down them that people wear because they’re, ahem, cool.

No, they’re not! They’re an item of footwear that are designed for doing exercise in.

To my mind, making trainers ‘designer’ and ‘fashiony’ is akin to someone deciding that silk blouses would be a really good thing to wear if you wanted to run a marathon. You get my point?

The thing is, I really like shoes. I own around 15 pairs, which for a bloke is quite a lot. And I wear all of them.

Do I own any trainers? Yes, I have one pair of cross-trainers that are good for exercise classes and in the gym, and I have a pair of running shoes that I wear when I, very occasionally, go for a run.

Neither of these could remotely be construed as cool, fashionable and look good accompanied by a pair of blue jeans.

And the thing about trainers is that some people keep them in the box and never put them on. What? You spend £100 on a pair of ‘shoes’ and never wear them?

For god’s sake men, buy a pair of boots or something. They’ll probably last longer, even if you do wear them every day!

I feel truly sorry for the inhabitants of America’s Gulf Coast and New Orleans in particular as the threat of Hurricane Gustav gets ever closer.

Bizarrely, though, it could well have been Hurricane Fay or Hanna, the two names chosen by the World Meteorological Organization either side of Mr Mahler’s first name.

In fact, for the first 25 years of naming cyclones and hurricanes, only women’s names were used – how generous of the meteorologists!

So what might be the name that becomes infamous over the next couple of years?

Well, Kates and Peters might need to watch out next year, while Fionas and Gastons are in line in 2010.

What a job, eh? Naming future tropical storms!

I’m an average-sized bloke – not big, not small. I’m comfortable with my sexuality – perhaps slightly more in touch with their feminine side than most, but slightly resolutely male.

I can talk about sport with the best of them, drink beer till I fall over and pull the most random trivia out of thin air.

So why oh why do I feel totally intimidated when I walk past a group of workmen in their luminous reflective vests?

They never say anything to me, probably never even notice me, but just make me feel unfeasibly uncomfortable.

And, for the life of me I don’t know why. Why do these men do this to me? What part of me are they tapping into so that I feel like this? It totally beats me!