Fuss and bother

I've commented before on how anything involving sex or nudity can cause a ridiculous fuss out of all proportion to what's being objected to.

I keep thinking people will become more relaxed about what is perfectly harmless behaviour, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What am I talking about? A long list of things. Breastfeeding in public. Kissing in public. Skimpy female clothing. Visible cleavage. Bra-less breasts. Naked male chests. Nudity on TV. The word vagina. Politicians having affairs. Older people's sex lives. Photos of women with stretch marks, scars or mastectomies.

There's still a huge tacit understanding about what is and what isn't allowed, and one step over the boundary can unleash a barely-concealed puritanism.

What the complaints usually amount to is a supposed flouting of "decency" (or sometimes public decency). But decency is such a vague concept it's almost meaningless.

Given my enthusiasm for kissing and hugging in public, I'm surprised nobody has ticked me off. But we in Northern Ireland are very keen to show public affection, even to people we've only just met. It's a delightful custom.

First and foremost

I was reading about first time experi-ences, which got me thinking about my own most memorable first times. There are quite a few. In fact most first times are memorable for one reason or another.

My first day at work in a local newspaper office is hard to forget. Firstly because at that time smoking wasn't banned in offices and half the staff smoked like chimneys. The fug was so thick I could scarcely breathe and I seriously thought of resigning. Secondly half the reporters were women and after my single-sex education they seemed like an alien species. It took me a while to get used to them!

My first sexual experience was a bit disastrous because my then girlfriend Trish insisted on sex even though she was menstruating. By the time we finished there was blood all over the place. Luckily I left the rented flat before the landlord discovered the mess. It looked like a major crime scene.

My first trip abroad was with my sister and parents to Paris. I remember accidentally locking myself out of my hotel room and trying to explain to one of the staff what had happened in my very poor French. I was so mortified I just wanted to fall through the floor.

The first house I owned (with Jenny) felt like a huge responsibility after living in flats for so many years. When we first moved in I was very nervous something awful would happen - the roof leaking, the chimney collapsing*, the boiler exploding, you name it. After a few weeks of uneventful occupation, I wondered why I'd been so jittery.

Some first times escape me - like my first taste of alcohol, my first hangover, my first day at school, my first driving lesson. Clearly they weren't very memorable. Or else I've buried the memories because they're far too embarrassing to revisit.

* In my first childhood home, the chimney did in fact collapse, seconds after I'd walked past it. A few seconds later and I would have been under a heap of rubble.

Nudes and prudes

There's a general assumption nowadays that prudery has died out and all the old hang-ups about sex and nudity are a thing of the past. But it's not true. Everywhere you look sex and nudity are causing as much fuss as ever. If anything the squeamishness is getting worse.

A long list of things can prompt anything from tut-tutting to all-out uproar. Breastfeeding in public. Kissing in public. Over-revealing female clothing. Too much visible cleavage. Bra-less breasts. Naked male chests. Nudity on TV. The word vagina. Politicians having affairs. Older people's sex lives. Photos of women with stretch marks, scars or mastectomies.

Despite today's supposed laid-back attitudes, in fact there's still a vast unspoken code of conduct about what's permitted and what isn't, and one step over the boundary can unleash a barely-concealed puritanism.

Of course there should be limits on what we do or show in public. I don't think daily life would be improved if everyone strolled around in the nude and shagged wherever they felt like it. But a bit more tolerance and open-mindedness would avoid a lot of the sillier complaints.

Some protests are just balmy. Is it really outrageous to name a female body part? Or show your affection by kissing someone? Or feed your child as nature intended? Only if you're a fully paid-up member of the Permanently Offended community.

Given my enthusiasm for kissing and hugging in public, I'm surprised nobody has ticked me off, though I've had a few disapproving looks. I don't expose my chest to all and sundry, and not my legs either unless it's a scorching Aussie summer. And I've never had an affair, so I'm free from criticism on that score.

But I have to report that prudery is a long time dying.

Loosening up

The sixties are always seen as the decade of the "sexual revolution", when all of a sudden people lost their sexual inhibitions and were jumping into bed with everyone left, right and centre.

That may have been true for some, but for me it was quite the opposite. Although I was a teenage boy and supposedly awash with testosterone and erotic yearnings, I was actually totally chaste until the sixties were virtually over.

My various girlfriends seemed to be equally chaste and made no attempt to seduce me. Clearly libidos had not yet run amok in the strait-laced London suburbs.

Though I did know one guy who was assiduously bedding every woman he came across, I had no wish to do the same. He seemed to have little time for anything else but proving his manhood. But there was certainly no shortage of eager women happy to satisfy his urges.

I suppose I never quite saw the point of the so-called sexual revolution. Of course it was a step forward that people were losing their sexual inhibitions and prudishness, but it didn't follow that you had to prove your newly liberated attitude day after day with as many partners as you could handle. Shedding inhibitions was somehow equated with promiscuity and lack of commitment.

I must say it's refreshing to hear younger people discussing sexuality with a degree of candour and directness that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up. That was the age of tortuous double entendres, coy references to "down there" or "consummation", and the elaborately evasive and euphemistic "Carry On" films. Any clearcut mention of sex was enough to traumatise the assembled company and have you frozen out of the conversation.

Certainly I wish I'd been able to talk about sex with the same frankness and in the same detail when I was an innocent and ignorant teenager. It might have saved a lot of confusion and embarrassment in later life when my sexual naivety was all too obvious. And still catches me out even now.

Not getting enough

French wives may or may not be pleased to know that their husbands now have a legal duty to have enough sex with them during the marriage. If he doesn't, he could be liable for hefty damages of up to 10,000 euro*.

France's civil code says married couples must agree to a "shared communal life", and a judge has now ruled this includes regular sex. Even if the husband excuses himself on the grounds that he's too tired, or has health problems, it won't impress the court. The 51 year old Nice man who claimed just that was still found to have shirked his marital duties.

The judge ruled that a sexual relationship between husband and wife is the expression of their mutual affection, and in this case it was absent. By getting married, he said, couples agreed to share their life and this clearly implied they would have sex with each other.

So those guys who're not so excited by their wives as they used to be, or just can't be bothered with the whole awkward business, or find they can't quite manage what's required, had better sort themselves out or they could face a large hole in their bank account.

A bit tough on those blokes who for good medical or psychological reasons simply can't make the grade and have to disappoint their loved ones. Are they now expected to do their conjugal duty whatever it takes?

And there again, some women may not be too keen on sex and wouldn't relish the prospect of hubby trying it on at every opportunity on the grounds that he's legally required to have plenty of sex with his spouse.

I don't recall the British marriage vows including a promise to have heaps of nooky as part of the deal. Surely "shared communal life" can be achieved by all sorts of means that don't necessarily include erotic bliss.

So is this some kind of feminist triumph for thwarted French wives who want their fair share of sexual pleasure? Maybe. But only if it makes inattentive males more considerate. Not if it turns them into priapic gropers.

* £8,500 or $14000 or A$13200

Love's labours lost

If one thing has changed dramatically over the years, it's the freedom people now have in pursuing sexual relationships. When I was young, suffocating restrictions made it very hard to follow your natural desires.

It all sounds absurdly draconian now, but in those days parents monitored their children's behaviour very closely. You couldn't simply fancy someone and let things take their course. That was unheard of.

Parents would have very strong opinions on the person you fancied and would strenuously resist any "unsuitable" match. Sexual activity, or even what was called "heavy petting", was strictly prohibited until you were married.

You were expected to "go steady" for a suitable period, then get engaged for another year or so, after which you would get married (that is, if your parents still approved of the spouse-to-be).

The fiancé would of course have to ask the fianceé's father for her hand in marriage, while the alternative of cohabitation was still unthinkable.

Once married, sexual activity was strictly confined to the missionary position, and any kind of "kinky" or non-vaginal sex was considered abnormal. The only natural relationship was the heterosexual one, homosexuality being firmly in the closet and preferably never spoken of.

Nowadays, after the steady erosion of one quaint restriction after another, the situation has changed out of all recognition, with the young having almost complete freedom to form whatever relationships they like and let them follow their natural path.

Parents have been relegated to their proper position, interested bystanders who will only give advice if it's asked for and will always try to support their children's choice of partners.

Youngsters today are incredibly lucky to have such freedom, and not knowing what previous generations had to contend with, they mostly take it for granted. Which is not surprising.

Of course some of them take these new freedoms too far and make a mess of their lives. But better that than being bound hand and foot.

Pleasure seekers

Companies may be collapsing in droves because of the economic crisis, but one business that's flourishing like never before is sex toys.

Shops and firms that market them report surging sales as the old image of seedy backstreet dives full of shifty men in dirty raincoats has been ousted by a more enticing picture of uninhibited men and women routinely enhancing their pleasure.

Sales of sex toys are up by a staggering thirty to thirty-five per cent on a year ago. They're increasingly given as presents - even wedding gifts. One company suggests the platinum vibrator with diamonds (£2275) for the bride, and the gold-plated ones (£227) for the bridesmaids.

After all, if the credit crunch means you can no longer afford that up-market restaurant or that designer dress, you can always stay at home and get your pleasure a cheaper way. Well, maybe with plastic rather than platinum.

To cater for all tastes, there are even environmentally-friendly sex toys like feather tickle-sticks and wooden spanking rulers.

Of course the rising popularity of sex toys has prompted criticism that they are just a new source of female insecurity, leading women to think their sexuality can only be fully enjoyed with an expensive, designer-label gizmo. On the other hand, whatever floats your boat, as they say.

Apparently men no longer feel threatened by vibrators, fearing their male functions to be redundant. Now they realise a little technical help in that department can be handy, increasing the pleasure for both them and their partner.

So the next time you wander into that distinguished restaurant and find it's deserted, there could be a simple explanation. All those missing diners have finally sliced up their credit cards and taken to their beds.
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Goodness me, it's my second blogiversary this very day. Have I really been churning out this drivel for as long as that?
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Jade Goody was rather upstaged at THAT wedding by Jack Tweed and his pals leaving home in nothing but scanty female underwear. Brilliant! A hearty thumbs-up for cross-dressers everywhere!

Bedtime stories

The story of the 105 year old virgin got me thinking. Just how believable are surveys on sex when we have no way of checking people's unlikely replies?

The newspapers are full of breathless headlines about how often, or how little, we're getting our end away. Or how many affairs we've had or which unconventional form of sex. But is it really true?

People are probably more likely to lie about sex than just about anything else. Of course we all want others to think we're having an ecstatic time in bed, that our partners are irresistible sex bombshells, that we can't get enough of it. Who wants to be thought of as a frustrated loner resorting to guilty fumblings in a shabby bedsit?

So when a survey says that 37 year old Jack is at it every night, has had 91 lovers and his wife is insatiable, is it any more credible than Pinnochio giving birth to triplets? Where's the evidence? Especially if he's anonymous and there's nobody out there to say "Him? Are you joking? The only thing that gets him going is the football results."

Survey after survey claims men have had a lot more affairs than women. So exactly who are they having the surplus affairs with? The dogs? A series of Romanian women? Amnesiacs? Other men?

And with sexual frequency, we're obviously relying more on personal memory and estimation than a tangible record of what happened when. How many times in the last month? Ooer, let me think. Choose a number, any number, then double it....

But there again, how many people take any notice of sex surveys, whether bogus or genuine? Sex is such a personal business and preferences so unique, why should we care what other people do? Somehow I think knowing your own loved one's hot spots is more useful than knowing the climax rate in Huddersfield.
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Nicole has a really perceptive and thought-provoking post about lying and deception. Go have a look.

Anti-climax

How can we all improve our quality of life? Well, 105 year old Clara Meadmore has the answer - stay a virgin and don't waste your time thinking about sex.

"I imagine there's a lot of hassle involved and I've always been busy doing other things" she says. "I made up my mind at the age of 12 never to marry and I've never gone back on that."

The Cornish centenarian insists she's never even tried it. And why should I doubt her? She maintains gardening, cooking and listening to the radio are pleasure enough.

She may have a point. Just think of all the time we fritter away satisfying our carnal lusts. Not to mention all the texts, emails, phone calls and feverish daydreams hoping for more of the same.

Without all that, office productivity would rocket, we would pay more attention to the world's problems, we would remember that upcoming wedding anniversary, and we would finally get to grips with Marcel Proust.

There'd be no more squeezing into overtight dresses, teetering on painful heels, or stuffing socks down Y-fronts. Oh, and I wouldn't have wasted hundreds of hours obsessing over my totally unreciprocated longings for the gorgeous Elena*.

Actually, remarkable as it may seem, sex hardly crossed my mind until my early twenties. Even at boarding school, I never joined the other boys in their furtive fumblings under the bedclothes. But once I discovered this age-old pursuit, there was no looking back. Clara Meadmore I was not.

But if we'd all been virgins our entire life, would we actually have missed all those sweaty couplings? Or would we just wonder why other people were so fixated on fleeting orgasms and why they spent so much time chasing after them?

How much of our sexual appetite is fed by outside influences and how much is a natural impulse? The two are so entangled, it's impossible to say.

* The name has been changed to avoid marital disharmony

Home truths

I'm always curious about other people's homes - how they furnish them, what they keep in them, what gadgets they have, how spartan or cluttered they are. I love it when I'm invited into a home I've never seen before. And I'm always peeping into people's windows as I walk along the street.

The most spartan house I ever saw belonged to a friend's aunt in Liverpool. Aunt Dolly was deeply religious and refused to own anything that wasn't strictly essential. Every room was totally basic - just tables, chairs, beds and cupboards. There were no carpets, no ornaments, no pictures, no books. It would have given me the creeps if it wasn't a rather refreshing contrast to the mountainous clutter of my parents' house.

I've seen plenty of cluttered homes, with so many bits and pieces stacked everywhere I have to step carefully through the remaining spaces to avoid toppling huge piles of books, crushing the kids' toys or stepping on a pot plant. The occupants always apologise for the mess and vow to tidy up but the next visit usually reveals even more jumble and disorder.

There are homes where just about everything is faulty and needs attention but the faults are seen as a charming part of the domestic ambience. Ah yes, that door always sticks. Oh yes, that radiator has an awful rattle. And don't worry about the leak, I'll just put a bucket under it.

Some houses exude sex. The main bedroom is full of nude pictures, the bed coverings are silky and sensuous, and a titillating erotic memoir lies on the bedside table. No doubt there are drawers full of sexy underwear and vibrators but I wouldn't be that nosy.

Householders can be so obsessively houseproud you're nervous of touching anything at all in case you leave a fingerprint or a dirty mark or any trace whatever of human contact. Every pristine object looks as if it were bought yesterday and I feel like I'm in a museum. I keep expecting a security alarm to go off or a po-faced attendant to say I'm too close to something.

People's houses are full of fascinating insights into their private lives. And sometimes repulsive ones. I'll never forget the elderly London woman who kept hundreds of cats in her four-bedroom house - the overpowering stink had to be smelt to be believed. She was probably so used to it she never even noticed.

Pretty ain't enough

So many men are naturally highly sexed, you'd think women wouldn't need to go to such lengths to make themselves look sexy. Yet men still demand a perfect female body to make love to. They want to have their cake and eat it.

It's not enough for the woman to be female, or pretty, or likeable, or just willing. If she doesn't conform to his mental image of sultry sexiness, she's somehow spoiling his pleasure.

So she has to spend her time primping and preening, depilating and dieting, slapping on cosmetics and enduring plastic surgery, so her man can feel suitably chuffed while he's getting his rocks off. This extreme male selfishness is euphemistically passed off as "looking after your man".

A woman I once knew said her ex-husband insisted on the full female regalia - padded bra, girdle, tight skirt, high heels and thick make-up - or he would dismiss her as plain and unfeminine. She always felt like a deranged drag queen. Needless to say, the marriage didn't last very long.

If women expected men to behave the same way, to doll themselves up like some theatrical dandy, men would simply laugh and take themselves off. But they reserve the right to impose laborious and arbitrary beauty regimes on women.

Unfortunately the media happily collude in this oppressive behaviour and give women relentless advice on how to turn themselves into male fantasies, complete with doctored photos of impossibly perfect women for them to aspire to.

The utter madness of this sexual straitjacket only becomes clear when some unlucky woman who's opted for plastic surgery once too often dies on the operating table and goes to an early grave - all in the name of giving her man an extra bedtime thrill.

PS: There have been several stories recently about women who sought permanent hair removal by laser, only to have their skin irreversibly disfigured by over-powerful lasers.

PPS: Virtually all the comments have disagreed with me - the pressure for women to be physically perfect comes not from men but from their own self-criticism, from other women and from advertising that plays on women's insecurities. How wrong can one be!

Bed and bored

Northern Irish couples are almost twice as likely to blame collapsing marriages on affairs as couples in the rest of the UK.

They're also twice as likely to blame boredom, though domestic violence and lack of sex are mentioned a lot less*.

Why so many affairs? Are there really that many or is it just that Northern Irish folk are more likely to know about them because it's such a tight-knit society?

People here are so closely connected through family, work and neighbourhood links that if your spouse is bedding someone else the chances are you'll find out pretty quickly through a mutual friend or workmate. Especially since Northern Irelanders are such avid gossips.

If you want to keep an affair under wraps, you'll have to do it in disguise or in a different country. And steer clear of that travel agent who just happens to be your plumber's cousin.

But what about boredom? Why do so many Northern Irish couples find each other so dull? Perhaps it's all those men whose idea of excitement is a day's fishing. Or all those women whose big thing is scouring the outlet centres for a flattering blouse.

Or maybe it's just that their minds have stopped functioning after another 10 hour working day to pay for the sky-high mortgage on their fashionable Malone apartment?

It's also interesting that although many Northern Irelanders are intensely religious, divine guidance doesn't necessarily stop hubby making out with Fiona from Accounts and upsetting the marital apple cart. Or maybe it was the missis yakking on about the benefits of the Good Book that drove him into Fiona's arms in the first place. God works in mysterious ways....

* A survey by InsideDivorce.com, reported by Relate Northern Ireland.

Old gold

As a fully paid-up sexagenarian, I'm glad ageism is a hot topic nowadays, with new laws recently passed on the subject. But there are still some hoary old stereotypes about oldies. To mention but a few:

(1) They can't do anything active any more, they're physically over the hill. Actually we're getting so adventurous doctors are seeing more and more sports injuries among oldies who just refuse to slow down.

(2) They're set in their ways, stuck in the past. But there are loads of Silver Surfers glued to their computers and grey-haired militants rooting for radical issues like global warming and third-world poverty.

(3) They're grumpy and cranky, all they do is moan. Tell that to the sprightly volunteers in the charity shop or the beaming grandma looking after her adored grandchildren.

(4) They never have sex, the vital juices have dried up. On the contrary, oldies are having so much sex with so many partners there's been a big increase in STIs in that age group. Viagra has a lot to answer for!

(5) They hate young people. Not if they have the charming grandchildren just mentioned. Not if they're going to evening classes full of youngsters. Not if they're avidly reading books by young authors.

(6) They're afraid of everything and everyone and scared to go out the front door. My 85 year old mother has just set off on a coach holiday to the South of France, on her own, and expects to have a whale of a time. There are oldies doing parachute jumps, climbing mountains and sailing around the world.

Certainly I surprise myself with my complete non-resemblance to any of the ageist clichés, feeling and acting much the same as I did ten or twenty years ago. I still work, I'm still healthy, my brain's still buzzing, I'm still insatiably curious about all sort of things. If I hear one more reference to doddery pensioners playing bingo, I think I might lash out with my razor-tipped zimmer frame. Clapped-out oldies? Harumph.

The coy of sex

We like to think we're so sexually liberated nowadays, happy to talk about anything without a murmur. Gone is the old prudery of our strait-laced parents.

Well, not quite. A new report says over a third of Britons find talking with a new partner about condoms so embarrassing it puts them off using one. And over 40 per cent think mentioning them is a sexual turn-off.

The Family Planning Association, which did the research, is surprised at this reticence in the midst of a 'highly sexualised society'. It's also surprised that the young are just as inhibited as the old.

But there's a world of difference between the public flaunting of sex, with salacious stories and images in newspapers and on TV screens, and people's private lives, where dealing with anything outside the romantic norm of spontaneous orgasmic bliss can be perplexing and awkward.

Who wants to discuss their imperfect bodies or sexual infections or impotence? We feel like the party pooper at the sparkling soiree, sabotaging something precious. Easier just to get on with it, swallow our doubts and hope for the best.

We think that if we mention too many negatives, it might even frighten the other person away and snuff out the relationship before it started. Even if we feel bold enough to handle the stumbling blocks, can our partner do the same?

This sexual coyness is something we have to solve though. Among other things, it's feeding the rapid spread of sexual infections which blight so many lives. That lingering stiff upper lip needs to be loosened fast.

Tart Mart

In the interests of balance, as they say, I thought I'd put the case for prostitution being completely legal - or a Tart Mart on every high street.

Legalists would say that outlawing prostitution and all its associated activities - kerb-crawling, paying for sex, soliciting etc - simply worsens all the undesirable aspects of the work and makes it harder to help women who feel trapped in dreadful circumstances.

If it's all illegal, prostitutes shy away from offers of help for fear of alerting the authorities. Women thinking of becoming prostitutes won't voice their misgivings for fear of public odium.

Appalling working conditions and violence from pimps and customers go unnoticed and unchallenged because illegality keeps them hidden and the normal safeguards of employment law don't apply.

And it's harder for women forced into prostitution by people-traffickers and others to seek aid in escaping their captors and bringing them to justice.

Only if legal restrictions are lifted and prostitutes are able to do their work freely and openly without social stigma will it be possible to deal effectively with all the hellish problems they face, which in the case of HIV and other sexual infections spill over into the rest of society.

Only if they can identify themselves and talk frankly to others about their experiences and needs, without shame or condemnation, can we fully understand what they go through and why they deserve the same workplace rights that other employees take for granted, like health and safety measures, adequate holidays and rest days, and protection from violence and harassment. Or simply the right to walk out of a job they were tricked into and then shackled to by debts and threats.

There're no grounds for prostitution to be illegal apart from the squeamish distaste and snobbery of the general public, who want these embarrassing people swept away into a dark corner and forgotten about. There's no good reason why prostitutes should be treated differently from any other group of workers trying to make a living from whatever they're good at.

If you want evidence of how making it legal brings benefits, you only have to look at homosexuality. Once draconian anti-gay laws were lifted, the problems of persecution and self-hatred were greatly reduced and there was a huge change in social attitudes. And the dire predictions of sexual anarchy proved baseless. In the words of the pro-abortion lobby - Keep it legal, keep it safe.

(So convincing I find myself switching sides again!)

See also previous post, putting the case for banning prostitution.

Banning prostitution

I've been prompted to explain why I think prostitution should be banned rather than tolerated. Isn't that a bit draconian, a bit heavy-handed?

For years I took the classic libertarian position that if there was a demand for prostitutes then let them get on with it and make a living out of foolish sex-obsessed customers.

Okay, so the working conditions might not be too good - pimps, violence, sexual infections, freezing streets - but lots of jobs have shitty downsides. You have to decide whether the grunge is worth what you get out of it.

But then I thought, hang on, who gains anything at all out of prostitution? Does it produce any benefit whatever (apart from cash)? You can't say the dreadful conditions are the price you pay for something essential like coal or clothing or medicine.

Despite what men say, they won't turn into psychotic savages if they don't get sexual release and burn up their testosterone. In any case, they're free to do it without paying anyone else.

And working conditions for prostitutes aren't just poor, they're barbaric. Many prostitutes nowadays are at the mercy of people-traffickers who control their every move, and having sex with these women is effectively rape and torture.

For many men, visiting a prostitute is not just sexual release but a display of power over women, a way of humiliating them and showing who's boss. Anyone who thinks it's prostitutes who have the power should try doing the job themselves for 24 hours.

That's why I now think this whole sordid trade should be banned, as it has been in some other countries. Yes, there's a risk it'll just go underground, but that's not a reason to accept something utterly uncivilised.

Wishy washy liberalism is out of place here, some tough-minded radicalism is more appropriate. Men should keep it in their pants and women should have decent, fulfilling jobs.

(And for the record, I've never been to a prostitute in my life and never saw the attraction)

Thanks to Bellulah for her prompt. See also this excellent overview of the international sex workers' movement pointed out by Medbh. See also next post, which puts the case for legalising prostitution.

Couples and break-ups

There's a lot of arguments about the issue most likely to split couples apart. Is it sex? Money? Housework? Politics? Violence? Weirdness? In theory it could be just about anything - whatever you feel so strongly about that the other person's totally opposite attitude is just too much to take.

With Jenny and I, I think what would separate us beyond repair is actually sexism. Jenny having been a strong feminist ever since I met her, the one thing she couldn't stomach would be my turning into a stereotype male, watching the footie and guzzling beer while she cleaned the house and knocked up the evening meal. We've always tried to share the pleasures and chores of domestic life equally, and hopefully we don't slip into the traditional sex roles too often.

Early in our relationship money became a thorny issue. I still had my own bank account while Jenny wanted us to pool our cash. Luckily I came round to the idea and a joint account saved the day. Jenny has always been freer with money than me, and sometimes sees me as mean and ungenerous. But going broke is one of my big anxieties, so splashing out isn't easy. It helps that we have a lot more money than when we first met - when we were two amorous but seriously underpaid booksellers.

Housework isn't a serious bone of contention. I do my fair share - in fact when Jenny was working in Glasgow I did all the house-cleaning here. Perhaps not entirely to her standard (the thinnest coating of dust makes women very antsy!) but it was respectable enough. Jenny does most of the cooking, as she loves cooking, but I do all the washing up and a lot of the shopping. Not to mention most of the gardening and looking after the two cars. But then Jenny earns a lot more than me so fair's fair.

As for sex, my lips are sealed. Call me old-fashioned, but I think some subjects are too delicate and too intimate for the full-frontal exposure of a global diary. So you'll have to use your imagination on that one. Bondage? Cross-dressing? Nurses' uniforms? That would be telling. All I can say is, it won't be sex that breaks up the happy home. Unless it's sex with someone else of course. But let's not go there either.

I could chatter on freely about couples uncoupling - isn't it strange how those dream couples suddenly crash and burn while the most unlikely matches endure effortlessly? But there's too much to say - it'll have to wait till later.