Mankind has always had an uneasy truce with Womankind. It starts from birth and carries on forever, wherever men and women coexist. There are definitely “guy” things and “girl” things and never the twain shall meet.

You may remember that I have fraternal twins - a boy and a girl. This is quite different than identical twins, although we still get asked some days if they are identical. My favourite answer is -  "No, they aren't identical. They have different plumbing." I still get blank stares with that answer….

When the kids were just tiny and sitting up, the differences started to become visible to us. The boy would take any toy given to him and start making sounds like engines, move it like a truck or off-road vehicle. He would happily play with that toy for at least five or ten minutes at a time until he wanted another one. My guess is he ran out of gas, but that's only a theory. Babies never really run out of gas. The girl was the exact opposite. I would hand her a toy, she would look at it for 2.35 femtoseconds, toss it over her shoulder and put her hand out for another toy. Does anyone else see a pattern here?

As they got older, and son number two arrived, the differences between the sexes really started to get to my darling wife. One of the boys would do something and she would get upset and start into "he's your son, you deal with it!".

I would look into the next room to see what the boys were doing – the eldest would be climbing a bookcase and reaching for something or other and the youngest would be doing something with the dog and a wall socket. Seeing nothing of interest, I would go back to my wife and ask her again what the trouble was. Yes, I know I shouldn't have gone back right away. What can I say - three kids under three makes your mind go mushy.

When my darling would describe the "problem" I would just laugh it off and say "Honey, don't worry, it's just a guy thing. They’ll be fine". After the first two times, I didn't laugh, but still just said it was a guy thing. See, men are capable of learning.

I’ll try to give an example. One that comes to mind is when my eldest took apart a clock when he was about three or four. He was very methodical and even tried to put it back together again. There were a few parts left over, which drove my wife nuts. I thought it was great – spare parts I didn’t have to pay for, for something else. Didn’t have to be a clock.  Sweet. The other clocks in the house still worked – mostly. My wife was not amused.

Women don’t get that and I don’t know why – men are pretty happy as long as what we planned happens in the same 24 hour period. Women seem to need a timeline, down to the second. They constantly ask men when they’ll be done, when are they going to do this or that, how long will it take to finish this. Then women complain that we aren’t spontaneous enough. Who has time!? We’re still trying to read the schedule! I could give you examples of ‘girl things’ that drive me nuts, but what’s the point. They come at me every day so there’s no way I could keep the list up to date.

Women have to understand, balance is everything. Work and play, yin and yang, big and small, hunter and gatherer, offence and defence, a team that can go the distance, partners that give one hundred and ten percent! Pick your favourite cliché and go with it. After all, it’s a guy thing.