Beware men with sheds

It comes as no surprise that Hemingway wrote in a wooden cabin or that Roald Dahl, Dylan Thomas and Shaw were shed enthusiasts

They are not even embarrassed about it – men who like sheds, I mean. Either they've already got one, and spend hours inside on those male functions that can be performed only in a faux-rustic structure at the bottom of the garden, or they yearn to acquire one. It is a widespread male fantasy, a grown-up version of the little boy who longs to run away from home, and seems to have a particular appeal for writers. It comes as no surprise at all to learn that Hemingway wrote in a wooden cabin, or that Roald Dahl, Dylan Thomas and George Bernard Shaw were all shed enthusiasts.

I could spend some time at this point asking whether this is a manifestation of gender dimorphism – Virginia Woolf is not, after all, the author of A Shed of One's Own – but I have been saved the trouble by a new book. Men and Sheds is written by a man, inevitably, and contains interviews with more than 40 proud shed-owners. "The fascinating story of each bloke and his shed is accompanied by photographs of the inner sanctum and of the customized exterior," proclaims Amazon, the online bookstore, in a brave attempt to shift copies of Gordon Thorburn's magnum opus.

I have yet to discover whether I know any of the interviewees, although the chances seem quite high. Like most women, I spent years trying to find a man with an internal life and ended up with a series of blokes with sheds. "The unexamined life is not worth living," I once remarked to a boyfriend – I always think it helps to quote Socrates in a crisis – and he responded with a puzzled "What?" This particular man really did want a shed, preferably in an advanced state of dilapidation, but in other instances the longing is metaphorical.

The point of a shed is that it is not a domestic space. It is a refuge, embodying fantasies of impermanence, making do, the frontier spirit. It also provides an escape from women; I never cease to be amazed by the myriad excuses that men – not all of them, but a damn sight too many for comfort – invent to avoid the company of the other half of the human race. Sitting in a shed is a lazier option than joining a gentlemen's or working-men's club, sledging across Antarctica, becoming a Catholic priest or serving in the UN peace-keeping force in Bosnia.

Sheds are repositories of things men like to collect: muddy football boots they last wore in 1988, damp copies of Wisden, Black Sabbath LPs they are unable to play on the broken turntable that sits on the floor, waiting to be mended. This represents not so much a nesting instinct as one of endless procrastination, a vision of a future filled with small but satisfying tasks that will never actually be completed. And this is where sheds reveal their symbolic function, as an embodiment of the clutter that fills a certain type of masculine mind.

Shed-lovers can usually be relied upon to tell you who opened the batting for New Zealand in 1934 and quote entire paragraphs of 1066 And All That from memory. Guy Pringle, the male protagonist of Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, is the quintessential man with a shed, even if his circumstances – working for the British Council in Bucharest at the outbreak of the Second World War – do not allow him to own one.

His wife, Harriet, who marries him after only a few weeks' acquaintance, gradually recognises that he is at his happiest when absorbed in useless projects and surrounded by virtual strangers. "For him, personal relationships were incidental. His fulfilment came from the outside world," Harriet reflects unhappily, in a passage that must have struck a chord with thousands of women readers.

If only Guy had had a shed when she first met him, Harriet might have been forewarned. They are where a certain type of man goes when he is too old to keep model aeroplanes in his bedroom or when life makes unreasonable demands, such as having to pick up dirty socks or converse with other people. Men educated at British public schools are particularly prone – it is what all that sensory deprivation prepares them for – but no class is immune. Beware men with sheds is my advice, unless they swear on their mother's life it is just a convenient place to keep the lawn mower.