Belgians, Virgins and Mysinglefriend online dating site
MY youngest had us in fits of laughter again this week, when he started talking about “the Belgian Mary”.
We had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained that he’d been learning about the Belgian Mary at school, when the vicar came to talk to his class.
It wasn’t until he said: “You know, Jesus and the Belgian Mary” that it clicked, and we all fell around laughing.
His sisters and I told him that it was the Virgin Mary, but he carried on insisting that Jesus’ mother was the Belgian Mary (I worry about his hearing sometimes) and that it was the rest of us who’d got it wrong. He’s only six (bless!)
From now on, in our house at least, the mother of Jesus will, I’m afraid, always be known as the Belgian Mary.
And his sisters were quite happy to leave him with this much funnier misapprehension.
But I felt it was my duty to put him straight.
In my efforts to convince him that she really was the Virgin Mary, and not from Belgium at all , I found myself trying to explain both the Virgin birth and what a virgin is.
I’ve always tried to be completely open on the subject of sex, and had a policy of “blind them with science” when my older two daughteres asked me anything biological.
This approach seemed to work better with his big sisters though. Maybe it was because there were two of them, with just a two year age gap. From about the age of five they were constantly bombarding me with questions on the subject.
We had an illustrated children’s book called “The Body”, which they found hysterically funny and fascinating in equal measure. This was their main reference book for three or four years and they rapidly had enough information to choose it as their specialist subject should they ever get on to Mastermind.
In contrast, my little boy seems totally disinterested. And because he’s never asked any questions, I now realise he is blissfully ignorant on the subject. Which is either really good or really bad. I’ve not made my mind up yet.
So to explain what a virgin was, I had to tell him what sex was. I expected a stream of questions, or giggles. But he just listened in a disinterested sort of way.
I don’t think I did a very good job though. Because when I finished he asked: “Does that mean you’re a virgin mummy?”
As good as, I told him.
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THIS week I have made a major technological break-through. I have gone wireless. And it’s a disaster!
Just in case you are even more of an old fuddy-duddy technophobe than me, and think wireless is something to do with listening to Radio 3, I must explain that we are talking here about using the internet without wires.
It works – brilliantly! I can now open my laptop anywhere in the house and log on to the internet! Lots of exclamation marks!! To me, this kind of thing is practically science fiction. If I’m not careful Capt James T.Kirk will be beaming down into the bedroom.
So tonight I get my little one off to bed, fall asleep with him for 10 minutes (it’s a bad habit, I know, but he’s just so cuddly) and then get into my own bed, with the laptop, to write this column.
But now, instead of getting cracking on the actual writing, I convince myself I am doing “research” on the internet.
Fatal! Before I know it, it’s midnight and I haven’t written a word. Aargh!
We’ve had the internet for years, but until now it’s been plugged into the wall, in one of the girls’ rooms.
But tonight, with nobody looking over my shoulder, I was well and truly ensnared by the world wide web for the first time.
It started out like a dawdle thru’ all the trashier Sunday papers. Somehow I found myself clicking into the internet’s biggest current obsession: Paris Hilton and her possible forthcoming 45 day jail term for DUI (that’s driving under the influence, apparently).
There was advice to Paris from Candy Spelling (if you don’t already know who she is, you don’t need to. Don’t ask). Boring, boring, boring.
But I did find one fact that left me totally mesmerised. Candy Spelling, apparently, has one whole room in her mansion dedicated to gift wrapping… hard to take in, isn’t it?
I thought I had hit the heights of organisation when I dedicated a box in the utility room to gift wrapping. You know how you get all those nice gift bags nowadays. They’re so environmentally friendly because you just change the tag and recycle them. All you need is a new bit of tissue. Way quicker than faffing about with sellotape and scissors.
So, I cannot help but admire Candy Spelling. Maybe one day all of us will have whole rooms dedicated to gift wrapping? We’ll need mansions first, so it’s definitely something to look forward to.
After browsing the gossip columns, I discovered some funny video clips. Most impressive was the sunglasses trick. One young man throws a pair of sunglasses and his mate catches them perfectly every time on his nose (even when he’s driving past in a car with the window open). You probably have to see it to get it, but again, I was impressed.
However, from then on it all went downhill. Before I realised that I’d been the victim of clever marketing, I let myself get dragged off at a tangent and found myself stupidly filling in my name and details on all sorts of weird and wonderful websites offering me freebies: Tesco giftcards, laptops, iPods and holidays.
It is all, of course, a giant con.
I also wasted countless minutes on Sarah Beeny’s mysinglefriend online dating site. I’ve never actually signed up to online dating because so far, whenever I enter my age to see if there are any single men in my age group, I find there are none at all in Devon.
I’m not joking. There are always plenty of nice younger men, and a smattering of older gentlemen. But there are never any my sort of age looking for women of the same age. I’ve decided single men in their 40s are all going through mid-life crises and remain convinced the woman of their dreams is 20-something.
But this time there was one! I should keep quiet, because I don’t want to cause a stampede. But ladies, there is one perfectly nice looking single 52-year-old man living in Taunton, willing to consider a relationship with a 48-year-old like me. Who’d have thought it?
Instantly all thoughts of writing this column, and getting any sleep at all tonight, went out the window. I was desperate to log on and join Sarah Beeny’s dating service.
But despite going through all the tickbox rigmarole three times, the internet kept logging me off.
I suspect it was the high volume of internet traffic from all the thousands of other single women in Devon trying to get a date with the county’s only available older man. I gave up. It’s late and I have a column to write
But if you do happen to be reading this, Kevin from Taunton, drop me a line.
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