Safe sex, cats and fingers

Some thoughts from the coast for you this Monday.

The school run this morning gave me reason to wonder if alcohol is really the friend that men think. For all those men that seek solace in a pint of beer I would suggest that the school run should be compulsory viewing, the same for the lads that spend their weekend chugging shots.

This is another example of the inefficiency of the state. Millions are spent on safe sex messages that have no hope of connecting with a young audience. The NHS stock piles tons of condoms but can’t ever quite work out how to give them away even though they want to. The simplest and quickest way of demonstrating the importance of birth control is to take these people on the school run. Make them stand there on a Monday morning and observe the whole experience, we don’t want them to only see the highlights after all. Then take these young men back to a classroom and place a raw leg of lamb in front of them, dressed in a T-shirt. One simple question is all that is needed “this is a pain free version of your arm, could you chew through it before she woke up?”

In other news one of my fellow travellers this morning clearly took the ‘be more dog’ advert very seriously. Sitting on a bench at the station he had a cat curled up on his lap, I thought this was odd because I have not seen any strays frequent the station. When the train arrived the traveller and his cat boarded, apparently they were having a day out! Sadly he stayed on the slow train so I wasn’t able to see how far he travelled, I would have loved to see him and the cat on the metro.

On a personal note I have had one of those weekends when I have been comfortably confident in achieving my end goal. Views of my beloved Isle have filled several hours of the weekend and reminded me that it is home. It may not be where I live right now and I may not have lived there before but the comfort and familiarity that I find in both desolate winter scenes and their golden summer alternatives is all I need to know. There are some great opportunities at the moment but I am positive I will find what I need when I am back off ‘pause’.

I may have some significant hurdles still to overcome but my Physioterrorist is right when she says that I don’t give in and I don’t listen to advice that doesn’t suit me. I may walk an awkward path that doesn’t follow straight lines but it’s my path and it leads to my goals. I will achieve because it’s what I do, after all I’m typing this with hands that shouldn’t be able to aren’t I?

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How will you spend your allowance?

Whilst I would never claim to be philosophical this is as close as I get. As a long time single middle age man I was considering why this situation seems impossible to change. I realised some time ago that the rituals of courtship are for the young. There is no dignity in dating and the older that we get the more ridiculous it becomes (thanks Steve for your recent demonstration).

 If you think about it we are predisposed to look at youngsters courting with the same eyes that we look at older married couples. It’s nice to see a young couple ‘starting out’ and equally delightful to see a long-term married couple. Conversely we are not as inspired by seeing young couples taking life too seriously and marrying young or older people dating.

 It seems that for most of us there are distinct phases in our lives. Perhaps there should be a warning at a certain age “caution this is your last chance”. Like a game of cards there is no longer an option to twist its stick all the way now. There is, of course, an issue with this in that we rarely hit the same stage at the same time. Whilst one partner has used their last twist the other is not quite ready to stick. The elderly couple that make you smile with the longevity of their relationship simply synchronised these stages, they were both at stick when they came together.

 Like most things this is only a general rule it does not apply to everyone. There are some occasions when people extend their hand and twist for longer. I theorise that there are two reasons for this; firstly these people may simply have not used all of their twists earlier in life. Perhaps we all start with a fixed number and it depends how long you make them last? So the person that spends much of their younger life single simply extends their search period. Alternatively the number of twists we get is not a simple number or, more accurately, it does not decrease in singular units. So happy relationships may take the number down by less than one and leave more opportunity for future success. Disastrous relationships meanwhile cost multiple twists as protection against future disasters. So those still embarking on relationships at more mature ages are a good prospect having experienced several happy relationships. Those of us that are not have good reason.

 Note to Jo, glass is half full I was just saying.