Twenty past six. Van on the drive, boots off at the door because I am not an animal, and that is as far as I have got.
Everything else is still on. Trousers with somebody's ceiling on them, a t shirt I would not wear anywhere, hands that will not properly come clean until Sunday. There is dust in my hair and I can feel it.
The half hour before the shower
There is a version of me that walks straight upstairs and deals with it. That man exists. He is not in the house tonight.
What actually happens is I sit down for a minute, which becomes twenty. Drink in hand, still filthy, still in it. The day is off my feet but not off me yet, and there is something in that half hour that I have never wanted to rush.
It is the only part of the day where I am not doing anything at all. On site I am solving something every ten minutes. At the gym I am counting. Here I am just sat in the wreckage of a day I already got through.
Why this version gets the reaction
I have posted a lot of photos. Gym lighting, holidays, the ones taken on a good day with the right light and a bit of thought behind them.
And every single time, the one that gets the reaction is this one. Knackered, dusty, not cleaned up, not posed, sat there in gear that has been worked in all day.
I understand why. It is not a look, it is evidence. Anybody can stand in front of a mirror at the right angle. You cannot fake having actually done a day. And there is a difference between a man who trains so he looks like he works, and a man who works.
What you would actually do about it
You would not ask me to shower first. We both know that.
You would say something about how I must be shattered, which would be true and would also not be why you had come over. You would find a reason to be closer than you need to be. And you would look at the state of my hands for slightly too long.
I would let you. I would sit exactly where I am and not move an inch and let you work up to it on your own time, because there is nothing in this world better than a man deciding something while he thinks you have not noticed.
And when you finally got there, I still would not get up.
The shower can wait
Eventually I do go up. The gear goes in the wash that never fully works. The water runs grey for a bit and then it does not. I come back down as the clean version and the day is properly over.
But the half hour before that is the honest one. That is a man who has actually been somewhere, done something with his hands, and has not made himself presentable for anybody yet.
What the gear actually does
It is not a uniform and it is not a costume. It is just what I had on while I did something difficult for ten hours.
But I understand what it does to people, because the reaction is far too consistent to be an accident. It is the fact that it was not chosen. Nobody styles a knee that is worn through. Nobody arranges dust.
Half the internet is men in outfits. This is a man in the state a day left him in, and that turns out to be a very different thing.
Why I have stopped changing first
I used to shower before anything else. Straight in, straight upstairs, deal with it, come down as the clean version.
Now I do not, and it is not laziness. It is that the clean version is the one everybody gets and the other one is mine.
You can decide for yourself which of the two you would rather be in the room with. I already know how that vote goes.
If that is the version you want, you are not alone, and you are also not going to get the rest of it here. I keep that one for people who have made it further than the front page.