FROM OUR DIY EDITOR

“TOOLS HELP A man build. And they never leave you.”

Bronko Hacksaw, a tool shop owner in Illinois tries to explain why he has swapped pursuing women for making things with high-end tools. Mr Hacksaw is a thirty-five-year-old whose wife left him two years ago and took his house and his two children.

“I retreated to my tools and soon I found other men in my situation. Withing six months we were hundreds, then thousands. Tool therapy is probably the only thing holding our country together right now, I figure. And guns. But they’re just tools, aren’t they?”

The “Great Tool Retreat”, as it is being called, has devastated dating across the United States. “Men spend their weekends with their tools,” explained Hugo Hefner, editor of B A Man, a men-only website that has ten million subscribers and prides itself that it rarely mentions the word woman in its copy.

“No offence to chicks, but our site is where wounded guys go to recover. We cater to that. We provide heavy articles on tools and sports and – weirdly – raising children: our readers like to read about raising kids. You can work out why. The tool crossover, as we refer to it – the preference of tools over women – happened sometime in the early part of this year. We surveyed it a number of times just to be sure. But it’s clear. Girls, a power drill is now your direct competition. And you’re losing. As Bob Marley put it: ‘No woman, no cry’. Good luck.”