Have I just become a boring male cliché?

I'm yet to reach 30, but I'm already turning into everything I thought I didn't want to be, writes Sean Russell

‘That’s when it hit me, I was quite content in that moment, too content’ (iStock/Getty Images)

It came on quite suddenly. It was a Thursday evening and I was minding my business at home after work. I was five days past my 29th birthday and it was then that I realised it – I had gone up a level, I'd reached the top echelons of boring middle-class man.

In some circles this might seem quite momentous, a coming of age of sorts. So, how did it happen? I had settled on the sofa and turned on Netflix and started to watch an episode of the Second World War documentary, Greatest Events of WWII in Colour. I then took the Lego McLaren Formula 1 car I've been building – a birthday present from my girlfriend – and I continued the model, following the booklet step by step.

That's when it hit me, I was quite content in that moment, too content, just building a model car while watching a war documentary. I'd become everything I never wanted to be. I then remembered that just the week before I had also bought Sir Ian Kershaw's seminal biography of Adolf Hitler.

Is there a time in every boring man's life when he just suddenly becomes obsessed with the Second World War? I've always been interested in history, that's not a problem. But I've always been more of a First World War guy, which was somehow justified, something do with the tragedy of it, the poetry, the pointlessness. But people (men) who are obsessed with the Second World War, and discuss the pros and cons of certain types of tank have always left me cold.

I guess it comes from the men of my parents' generation first. They saw their fathers as heroes out there fighting, but had no fight of their own. If fighting against the Nazi's was the ultimate symbol of masculinity to this generation of children, what was left for them in their mostly peaceful and economically booming adult lives? Part of it was seeking their masculinity vicariously through a mix of stories, reading, movies and documentaries.

How many dads hold The Bridge over the River Kwai as their favourite movie, or perhaps The Great Escape?

I never thought it would happen to me. But the truth is, I now genuinely find it all fascinating. I listened to The Rest is History podcast the other day, the two-part Hitler episode with Kershaw chatting with hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. I listened to it while cycling my bicycle around the Lee Valley road circuit. Yes, wearing lycra... It might already be too late for me.