I had an odd dream last night: all my teeth started falling out one by one. A girl at work said it was a sex dream, a dream expressing the fear that you are no longer sexually attractive. Perhaps. I must admit that I haven't consciously considered whether or not I am still sexually attractive. We're all a little vain, but I don't think about myself and my looks very often at all.
I do know that at my age jumping into bed with a woman without just a little time - a little flirting time - would be something close to a disaster. I haven't had sex in almost ten years, and although I know quite a few of the tunes, I would need a little time to tune up.
The other trouble is that, for example, the women I fancy at work are all at least 20 years younger than me, and not in a million years would they consider me as a potential sexual partner. There is one writer, a raddled old piece who most certainly looks older than she is because she looks about 90 but cannot yet be 90, who for a few days kept making cow eyes at me when she first joined, but that rapidly ended when she realised that in her I simply was not interested. I shan't give you her name, but she spent, or better, misspent a large number of years in the 70s and 80s as a showbiz correspondent out in California and looks as though she crammed about 100 years worth of partying into 20 years. She has not aged well.
Anyway, as I was saying the sweeties I am interested in (and I am sure it has never occurred to them that I might be) wouldn't look at me in a million years. Hence, I should imagine, my dream about losing my teeth.
Monday 25 May 2009
Friday 8 May 2009
On holidays and looking forward to time off
Holiday plans might well be taking shape, thank God, because I need a break. First off, I have sold the travel desk on a piece about going on a cruise on a freight ship. I knew they used to do them, but was surprised by how many freight lines still do them. Anyone curious should google and research.
As a rule, freight vessels which do take a passengers take about 12. Voyages tend to be long rather than short - I've even come across some 63-day long voyages. Accommodation is said to be quite good as is the food. Of course, the vessel is primarily a freight vessel so entertainment will be the books you bring with you and the conversations you might have with fellow passengers.
Rather than try to blag a freebie from individual freight lines, I have been in touch with a company in London which organises cruises, and they have already been back with several suggestions. The slight problem in my case is that I couldn't take too much time off work, so the cruise I take would have to be short. So far they are going to find out from a French company which, among other routes, sails weekly to Martinique. The voyage takes 11, so I should imagine that will be there and back. Then there is a Swedish company which does a round trip from England to Ireland to Scotland to Sweden, then back. And another company which does it's business in the Med. See what turns up.
Then there is my cousin's wedding blessing ceremony in August here in St Breward (I was a witness at his wedding in Hong Kong back in January), which will be followed by another party in his home village in Bordeaux, to which I am also invited.
Finally, in my ongoing campaign to get my younger brother to take a break, he and I are most likely to be off to Istanbul in September to stay with our sister whose husband was posted there last year.
Thinking about it all and the paid time off I can take, I suspect that however much I should like to go, I shall not be able to make the wedding knees-up in Bordeaux in August. Shame. For one things it would cost far too much to go there.
On a final note, my giving up the booze for a while to try to lose a little weight while I am still able to is coming along quite nicely, except I wouldn't mind having the occasional glass of wine. But I have told myself it won't be until the end of June, so I must stick to it.
As a rule, freight vessels which do take a passengers take about 12. Voyages tend to be long rather than short - I've even come across some 63-day long voyages. Accommodation is said to be quite good as is the food. Of course, the vessel is primarily a freight vessel so entertainment will be the books you bring with you and the conversations you might have with fellow passengers.
Rather than try to blag a freebie from individual freight lines, I have been in touch with a company in London which organises cruises, and they have already been back with several suggestions. The slight problem in my case is that I couldn't take too much time off work, so the cruise I take would have to be short. So far they are going to find out from a French company which, among other routes, sails weekly to Martinique. The voyage takes 11, so I should imagine that will be there and back. Then there is a Swedish company which does a round trip from England to Ireland to Scotland to Sweden, then back. And another company which does it's business in the Med. See what turns up.
Then there is my cousin's wedding blessing ceremony in August here in St Breward (I was a witness at his wedding in Hong Kong back in January), which will be followed by another party in his home village in Bordeaux, to which I am also invited.
Finally, in my ongoing campaign to get my younger brother to take a break, he and I are most likely to be off to Istanbul in September to stay with our sister whose husband was posted there last year.
Thinking about it all and the paid time off I can take, I suspect that however much I should like to go, I shall not be able to make the wedding knees-up in Bordeaux in August. Shame. For one things it would cost far too much to go there.
On a final note, my giving up the booze for a while to try to lose a little weight while I am still able to is coming along quite nicely, except I wouldn't mind having the occasional glass of wine. But I have told myself it won't be until the end of June, so I must stick to it.
Friday 1 May 2009
There's one born every minute
Got home last Wednesday and took to my bed these past two days with a cold. Trouble is that what with the general panic about 'swine flu' and the vast number of cases so far around the world, a staggering 207, I believe, my wife is convinced that I have caught the virus and has more or less quarantined me. There is no persuading her that I haven't got 'swine flu' (the quote marks are intended to convey irony), but I should like to take this opportunity to point out to a gullible world that every year around the world 500,000 people die of ordinary, human flu. So let's keep things a little in perspective, shall we? Furthermore, 'pandemic' does NOT mean that it is twice as worrying or anything of that kind, merely that it is popping up everywhere, in the sense that stupidity of 'pandemic'.
Thursday 23 April 2009
Advice Part Two — is this TOO cynical, or can we find common ground?
I must tread carefully here for fear of hurting feelings (and you know who you are), but it might well be worthwhile, sooner rather than later, to clarify my initial observations on advice and, more specifically, on what advice I might offer my son (the subtext being that if I ever felt inclined to bullshit anyone, my son, or sons if I had more than one, which I don't, would be the last to suffer that fate. Put another way, I am more inclined to tell him the truth than not.
I wrote that once I had heard the advice that it is best not to spend too much on a woman until you know her a little better and feel that, perhaps, she might be the one on whom it is worthwhile lavishing your pitiful riches. Saying so aroused howls of anguish from certain quarters who felt that if a man, presumably however much of a stranger he is, did not choose to lavish on them all the riches known to man and then some, he was merely some unfortunate cheapskate on whom wasting a glance was far too handsome a thing to do.
Well, forgive me for taking the opposite point of view and for stating, I hope clearly and categorically, that the advice I quoted is not only good and true, but essential if a man of a certain kind of character is to be spared — as much as these things are possible from the admittedly very restricted perspective of ht altar — from a life of misery.
Advice: if what first arouses a woman is the size of your wallet and, in the first instance, the initial proof you can give thereof, run for the hills. And if she still shows interest, keep running until she runs out of puff and casts around for another victim.
Call me a romantic old cunt, but these things are important.
I am now, a man approaching the cynical age of 60, prepared to admit two things:
1) that 'love' is, quite possibly, not the most reliable guide to the possible longetivity of a heterosexual relationship. To illuminate that, let me quote — or possibly misquote — John Barrymore: love, he said is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
2) when the game of love essentially boils down to preserving the financial viability of a moneyed dynasty for whom the essential task is to preserve and possibly bolster that viability when it encounters another moneyed dynasty, love must, of course, take a back seat. There can be no question. However, most of us will, for better or worse, never face such a dilemma.
So finally it comes down to the ordinary Joes such as myself meeting the ordinary Josephines and deciding whether they want to pay for sex or whether they are prepared to play a longer game.
Call me cynical or, if you are too tender for real life, don't, but that is how the cookie crumbles, whether or not you grew up in the civilised West or not.
Note to all men: If the girl of your dreams is somewhat disappointed that on the first date you are not fully prepared to flirt with Chapter 11 in order to make sure she has a reasonably good time, find another girl of your dreams. And thus spoke the Lord.
I wrote that once I had heard the advice that it is best not to spend too much on a woman until you know her a little better and feel that, perhaps, she might be the one on whom it is worthwhile lavishing your pitiful riches. Saying so aroused howls of anguish from certain quarters who felt that if a man, presumably however much of a stranger he is, did not choose to lavish on them all the riches known to man and then some, he was merely some unfortunate cheapskate on whom wasting a glance was far too handsome a thing to do.
Well, forgive me for taking the opposite point of view and for stating, I hope clearly and categorically, that the advice I quoted is not only good and true, but essential if a man of a certain kind of character is to be spared — as much as these things are possible from the admittedly very restricted perspective of ht altar — from a life of misery.
Advice: if what first arouses a woman is the size of your wallet and, in the first instance, the initial proof you can give thereof, run for the hills. And if she still shows interest, keep running until she runs out of puff and casts around for another victim.
Call me a romantic old cunt, but these things are important.
I am now, a man approaching the cynical age of 60, prepared to admit two things:
1) that 'love' is, quite possibly, not the most reliable guide to the possible longetivity of a heterosexual relationship. To illuminate that, let me quote — or possibly misquote — John Barrymore: love, he said is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
2) when the game of love essentially boils down to preserving the financial viability of a moneyed dynasty for whom the essential task is to preserve and possibly bolster that viability when it encounters another moneyed dynasty, love must, of course, take a back seat. There can be no question. However, most of us will, for better or worse, never face such a dilemma.
So finally it comes down to the ordinary Joes such as myself meeting the ordinary Josephines and deciding whether they want to pay for sex or whether they are prepared to play a longer game.
Call me cynical or, if you are too tender for real life, don't, but that is how the cookie crumbles, whether or not you grew up in the civilised West or not.
Note to all men: If the girl of your dreams is somewhat disappointed that on the first date you are not fully prepared to flirt with Chapter 11 in order to make sure she has a reasonably good time, find another girl of your dreams. And thus spoke the Lord.
Advice — embrace or avoid?
Reaching the grand age of 25 next November (the 21st, and all birthday cards will be welcomed), I have had a number of snippets of advice passed my way over the years and have heard snippets of advice passed to others. So I felt that, given the body of advice upon which I can now call, it might be appropriate if I passed on some of it.
None will be original, and the chances are that some of what you read here will be so familiar to you that you will ask yourselves just what exactly I must be thinking in passing it on. There might, alternatively, be pearls of wisdom here you have never come across. If so, all the better. All I can do is offer what I am about to record in the best faith and trust I shan't bore you to death.
The idea for this entry came just 45 minutes ago when, as often I do, I was day-dreaming and imagining seeing my son off on his first date (and, as though you hadn't guessed, I am not 24, but a good deal older, though were you to conspire in the fantasy with me that I am far younger than I am, I would be very grateful).
In my day dream, I take my son aside and ask him whether he has enough cash for the night to treat his date, and assuming that he might not or that he might well do with a little more, I slip him another tenner. And when I do so, I repeat the advice I heard and older man give a younger man in a radio play years ago: 'Don't spend a lot of money on a woman you don't know. Only start spending more money on her when and if you know her better and feel she is worth the expense. And if she doesn't like not having money lavished on her, tough and at least that will let you have more the measure of her.'
I heard it just the once, although at an age when I had already probably made the mistake against which the advice counseled. But i do remember telling myself to remember it and pass it on to a so, if and when I had one.
Anyway, walking down the street (in Paddington, West London, if you are interested, after eating a pleasant pizza with a tomato and onion salad and putting away a half-litre carafe of wine) I decided to dredge my memory for whatever other pieces of adice I had come across over the years.
There is, of course, the obvious one — and one I disagree with profoundly: never listen to advice. That of course is nonsense, although the implications behind that particular piece of nonsense are worth following up. But put as bluntly as that it is out and out nonsense. There will always be those who have more experience than us, in whatever field. If you have, for example, never visited North Cornwall and want to make your way from the village near which I live to, say, St Minver, it would be worth listening to the experience of anyone who has done that journey before, whether or not you would otherwise take their advice on any other matter.
They might tell you, as a stranger, not to bother using any of the back lanes as you are most certainly bound to get yourself lost; that the route taking the main road is longer and that your journey will take you longer, but by doing so you will at least most certainly reach your destination.
So I would never counsel anyone to ignore all advice which come their way. But nor would I counsel anyone always to listen to advice. For one thing most of it is contradictory. Here's an example, building on the scenario outlined about of a young man, my son in the above daydream, taking his first tentative steps in getting to know the opposite sex. An old cynic, a bitter man, aged well beyond his years who, for reasons that are partly his fault, has had little luck with women and faces an austere old age in which the comforting company of a woman will be absent, might advise: never trust a woman, son, ever. Love 'em and leave 'em.
On the other hand let me introduce you to another man, a man who is something of a sentimentalist and one who has had the good fortune to find the true love of a good woman and who, largely because of a lack of imagination, has never been tempted to stray. Now well into is sixtieth decade and as blissfully happy with his wife as he was the moment she decided he was hers, he might well advise a young man such as my son: treat them with respect and courtesy. No doubt that is an admirable sentiment, but wholly unworldly and typical of a man who has intimately know very few women.
So as far as advice is concerned, my advice is this: listen to it, evaluate it, evaluate the chap who is giving you that advice, neither accept nor reject it out of hand, and, most importantly, take your time acting on it if you do decide to do so.
Britain is now into its second recession of the past 20 years. And an intricate part of the lead-up to both recessions was a house-price bubble. During the first, I had just arrived in London to try my hand at working casual shifts for the nationals and was in touch with a friend I had made while working for an evening paper in Cardiff, South Wales. The year was 1990 and house prices were into their second or third year of more or less trebling every few months or so. I owned a house in Birmingham on which I was still paying the mortgage and his advice was: sell, get as large a mortgage as you can and buy in London. You can't lose. Well, I ignored his advice because not many months later the house price bubble burst and a great many people who had done exactly as he had counselled me were left out of pocket and what the pundits call 'negative equity', which means their house has a market value lower, and ofen considerably lower, than the amount of money they borrowed in order to buy it.
This entry is now getting rather long, so my advice to myself here is to conclude this, the first part, and return to the thought in a day or two, by which time I shall have marshalled my thoughts, dredged my memory and come up with other examples of pieces of advice which were either totally useless or rather sage.
None will be original, and the chances are that some of what you read here will be so familiar to you that you will ask yourselves just what exactly I must be thinking in passing it on. There might, alternatively, be pearls of wisdom here you have never come across. If so, all the better. All I can do is offer what I am about to record in the best faith and trust I shan't bore you to death.
The idea for this entry came just 45 minutes ago when, as often I do, I was day-dreaming and imagining seeing my son off on his first date (and, as though you hadn't guessed, I am not 24, but a good deal older, though were you to conspire in the fantasy with me that I am far younger than I am, I would be very grateful).
In my day dream, I take my son aside and ask him whether he has enough cash for the night to treat his date, and assuming that he might not or that he might well do with a little more, I slip him another tenner. And when I do so, I repeat the advice I heard and older man give a younger man in a radio play years ago: 'Don't spend a lot of money on a woman you don't know. Only start spending more money on her when and if you know her better and feel she is worth the expense. And if she doesn't like not having money lavished on her, tough and at least that will let you have more the measure of her.'
I heard it just the once, although at an age when I had already probably made the mistake against which the advice counseled. But i do remember telling myself to remember it and pass it on to a so, if and when I had one.
Anyway, walking down the street (in Paddington, West London, if you are interested, after eating a pleasant pizza with a tomato and onion salad and putting away a half-litre carafe of wine) I decided to dredge my memory for whatever other pieces of adice I had come across over the years.
There is, of course, the obvious one — and one I disagree with profoundly: never listen to advice. That of course is nonsense, although the implications behind that particular piece of nonsense are worth following up. But put as bluntly as that it is out and out nonsense. There will always be those who have more experience than us, in whatever field. If you have, for example, never visited North Cornwall and want to make your way from the village near which I live to, say, St Minver, it would be worth listening to the experience of anyone who has done that journey before, whether or not you would otherwise take their advice on any other matter.
They might tell you, as a stranger, not to bother using any of the back lanes as you are most certainly bound to get yourself lost; that the route taking the main road is longer and that your journey will take you longer, but by doing so you will at least most certainly reach your destination.
So I would never counsel anyone to ignore all advice which come their way. But nor would I counsel anyone always to listen to advice. For one thing most of it is contradictory. Here's an example, building on the scenario outlined about of a young man, my son in the above daydream, taking his first tentative steps in getting to know the opposite sex. An old cynic, a bitter man, aged well beyond his years who, for reasons that are partly his fault, has had little luck with women and faces an austere old age in which the comforting company of a woman will be absent, might advise: never trust a woman, son, ever. Love 'em and leave 'em.
On the other hand let me introduce you to another man, a man who is something of a sentimentalist and one who has had the good fortune to find the true love of a good woman and who, largely because of a lack of imagination, has never been tempted to stray. Now well into is sixtieth decade and as blissfully happy with his wife as he was the moment she decided he was hers, he might well advise a young man such as my son: treat them with respect and courtesy. No doubt that is an admirable sentiment, but wholly unworldly and typical of a man who has intimately know very few women.
So as far as advice is concerned, my advice is this: listen to it, evaluate it, evaluate the chap who is giving you that advice, neither accept nor reject it out of hand, and, most importantly, take your time acting on it if you do decide to do so.
Britain is now into its second recession of the past 20 years. And an intricate part of the lead-up to both recessions was a house-price bubble. During the first, I had just arrived in London to try my hand at working casual shifts for the nationals and was in touch with a friend I had made while working for an evening paper in Cardiff, South Wales. The year was 1990 and house prices were into their second or third year of more or less trebling every few months or so. I owned a house in Birmingham on which I was still paying the mortgage and his advice was: sell, get as large a mortgage as you can and buy in London. You can't lose. Well, I ignored his advice because not many months later the house price bubble burst and a great many people who had done exactly as he had counselled me were left out of pocket and what the pundits call 'negative equity', which means their house has a market value lower, and ofen considerably lower, than the amount of money they borrowed in order to buy it.
This entry is now getting rather long, so my advice to myself here is to conclude this, the first part, and return to the thought in a day or two, by which time I shall have marshalled my thoughts, dredged my memory and come up with other examples of pieces of advice which were either totally useless or rather sage.
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