Women

My last post on this blog seems to have been very well received.  I've had a number of women who have offered to have sex with me* and one of my friends has asked to be mentioned in my next post. So, the champagne is on ice, Carolyn, and it's a big shout out to Linda and the rest of the Sutton Bonnington posse!  Who'd have thought when I started this that I would be doing requests?

I've realised that, as I've got older, most of my close friends are women.  I have a few close male friends, but if I'm given the choice of a few beers with the lads or a cream tea with the girls, it's the lapsang souchong every time.

It wasn't always thus.  I was incredibly shy with girls as a teenager.  I think this was mainly down to my grammar school education at a single-sex school.  We had limited exposure to girls at the time when that exposure was needed most.  I suspect I was not alone in thinking that girls were a completely different animal to us boys.  For one thing, teenage post-pubescent boys spent all their time thinking about sex and all girls thought about was Marc Bolan and horseriding.

My shyness resulted in a few embarrassing dates and, I'm afraid to say, I treated some girlfriends rather shabbily.  It was the whole 'relationship' bit that I had a problem with in the early days.  My approach to chatting up girls varied from the 'juvenile Leslie Phillips' to the 'if I concentrate hard enough, that girl will ask me out'.

I was also incredibly naive.  The realisation that women aren't really that different to men didn't strike me until I was in my early twenties.  It certainly never occurred to me that women might enjoy having sex.

I went out with one girl for only a short while, but it was great fun.  She was small, bubbly and made me laugh.  I was 17 and my virginity had never even been remotely threatened (this didn't happen until I met my wife**). After we had been out a few times and we were snuggled up on the sofa of her parents' front room, she told me she was on the Pill.  My reaction was not, with hindsight, the obvious one.  I asked her what type it was, whether she was worried about the side effects and then I got my bus home.  I think it's what Germaine Greer would call 'having it delivered on a plate'. 

My university years were also largely women-free, dominated by drinking, football and following obscure 70s band around London (remember Burlesque, Supercharge and Roogalator?).  It was only when I went out into the world of work that I made some lasting friendships with women who taught me a huge amount about relationships and how the female mind and body worked.

So, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to some of my teenage girlfriends.  To Debbie, Joy, Bonita and a few others whose names I can't remember, I'm sorry I was such a git, but I was young, pulsating with hormones and hadn't read your instruction manual.  And to the girlfriend on the Pill, I have few regrets in life, but if I were to list them, my time spent with you on that winter evening when I was 17 is probably in the top 5.



*One woman.  And she put ;-) after her comment, which is internet-speak for "in your dreams".
** Not true.  My wife reads this blog, but she's easily bored and won't get down to these bits in smaller font at the bottom.