Adam had it hard.

Alison very reasonably asked (Comment 16.7.2010) how they can do extreme ironing without electricity. It's a very fair question, and I must now confess that I have never actually witnessed an Extreme Ironing competitition; at home we just have the normal 'Who will do the ironing competition'. I do believe however that ironing was done before electricity came out of sockets, because I've seen films like 'Antony and Cleopatra' and Elizabeth Taylor never had a creased toga even after a thorough ravishing. I expect Egyptian cotton was better than linen.

With regard to modern ironing and the household chores and things, we New Men sometimes think we are hard done by, but I suspect 'twas ever thus. It can't have been easy being a New Man when you were literally a New Man, i. e. Adam in the Garden of Eden.

There was so much to learn, and so little to guide you, particularly in the Battle of the Sexes Dept.

It seems likely that God was a male, if we're to believe the Christian theologians, although I believe the feminist fundamentalists have cast doubt on this and I don't think a proper endocrine/genotype work-up has ever been done.

Anyway being famous for His Goodness and Mercy He would doubtless have helped Adam as much as He could in those little problems which are likely to afflict any young man.

You could imagine the little conversations they would have had in the very early days.

God "Adam, I want you to do something for me"
Adam "Gladly Lord, what wouldst thou have me do?" (I'm sure Adam would have used this Northern Anglo-Saxon version of the 2nd person singular, as in "Tha's done nowt but grizzle ever since tha' coom", since Yorkshire is widely recognized to be the nearest thing to Paradise on Earth).

God "Go down into the valley"
Adam "What's a valley?" God would explain that a valley is the gap between two hills.

God "Then cross the river"
Adam "What's a river?" God explains that a river is long and wet, like a weekend in Rochdale.

God "In the hillside beyond the river you will find a cave"
Adam "What's a cave?" God explains it's a hole in a hill.

God "In the cave you'll find a woman"
Adam "What's a woman?" God explains, trying not to use his hands.

God "I want you to have sex with her".
Adam " What's sex?" God explains the clinical details, though with some hesitancy because He's obviously gone straight from the drawing board to the launch with this one, and He's not entirely confident of the plumbing details Himself (see my first blog dated June 27th) since there is, so far as we know, no Mrs. God, hence there has been no road test of the somewhat complex systems involved.

Anyway Adam gets the gist of what he is supposed to do, and off he trundles, down the valley, across the river, up the hill and into the cave.
An hour late, he's back, hot, flustered and clearly fed up.
Adam "What's a headache?"