Peter Rook: on the biological ticking time bomb
I'm going to start this week's column with a gag. I don't usually do punchline jokes, so please don't take this as an invitation to stop me in the street and tell me one.
I'm going to start this week's column with a gag. I don't usually do punchline jokes, so please don't take this as an invitation to stop me in the street and tell me one.Here goes.
Q: What can a man do while his wife is going through the menopause?
A: Keep busy. If you're handy with tools, you can finish the basement. When you are done, you will have a place to live.
The menopause. Yes, just when you thought you were safe to go dating and finding new exciting relationships with new exciting suitors, along comes the biological ticking time bomb that is the menopause.
It occurred to me that after last week's column, I may have been a tinsy bit premature in stating that the single greatest thing about being a singleton reborn was not living with someone who was living with "that time of the month".
This is because I was overlooking the menopause.
The monthly neurosis that is the hallmark of the "period" pales when compared to the devastating destruction that is the menopause.
Take cover in that basement you have constructed.
At this particularly fraught time, you will need a bit of your own HRT (Humour Replacement Therapy).
I'm fully aware that this column is unlikely to win me too many female fans – especially after a reader expressed "shock" that The Evening Telegraph had given oxygen to my misogynistic ramblings of last week.
"I can't believe The ET have allowed this to be printed – I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion etc, but this is just someone being petty and narrow-minded," wrote one website blogger.
Another stated, "Not all women turn into 'raging vengeful, vicious, gun-toting psychopaths' – most of us are quite normal and have no episodes of hormonal imbalances as his ex obviously did – or had she just had enough of his patronising male chauvinistic ways?"
It wasn't all one-sided, I'm pleased to report. The "period" is clearly a subject that polarises views.
One blogger wrote, "I think this is possibly the greatest piece of journalism I have EVER READ IN MY LIFE."
Well, I wouldn't go as far as to say that, but thank you all the same . . . and I'll see you next week mum.
Just when I was beginning to think I could be a patronising male chauvinist, a blogger by the name of Very Bad Man leapt to my defence. Although with sentiments like his, I'm not sure he did my cause much good.
"Just about every woman I've encountered is a raving loony, whatever time of the month it is. There's only so much rabbit stew a man can eat."
Blooming heck. And I thought I had issues.
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Saturday 13 March 2010
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