Jeremy Rhymes-With

Hector Drummond Posted on by

I’ve always hated Jeremy Hunt, but if he can help swing a Managed No Deal then he can have my kidney if he needs it. Same for Penny Mordaunt, who’ve I’ve never hated, but don’t think much of.

He wouldn’t be another public schoolboy with a PPE from Oxford, would he?

But do I trust him or Mordaunt? No. We can only hope that they have realised that this is their chance for the top job. Not that I’d put either of them in charge of a lemonade stall. Hunt would be a terrible PM in general. But if their personal ambition leads them to the right place on Brexit then I won’t be complaining (not until after Brexit is done, anyway).

Quote of the Day

Hector Drummond Posted on by

By Jim in the comments:

OT but sort of related, have you seen the article by Matthew Parris in the current edition of the Spectator? Where he admits that he as a politician was basically contemptuous of ‘public opinion’ and saw it as his job as one of using his power to thwart any parts of public opinion he found distasteful?

 

I have to say if the referendum result of 2016 achieves nothing whatsoever on Britain leaving the EU, it will have done one massive public service – it has forced vast swathes of the political class to openly admit their utter contempt for the voters, and that if they personally don’t agree with them, the voters can go hang, they’ll do everything they can to prevent anything happening they don’t like. Its made the nature of our ‘democracy’ incredibly clear for all to see.

 

Bryony Gordon: screw-up fascism

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Who could fail to love that quirky Telegraph goofball, Bryony Gordon? She’s so honest about her mental health problems, so funny about all the wacky things she’s done, so empathetic with all those women who struggle with their weight and their sanity?

Well, I fail to love her. And here’s why:

I was pleased, then, to see that the Advertising Standards Authority are to ban sexist TV adverts – not just out-dated portrayals of women doing the housework while their useless and lazy husbands slob around with their feet up (quite often the opposite happens in our house), but also on ads which suggest that not having an ideal physique might cause you to be a failure in life or love.

This is soft fascism. Actually, it’s getting quite close to hard fascism. But I have my own name for this sort of thing — I call it ‘screw-up fascism’.

Before I get onto her, I should say that the whole situation with the powers of the ASA (the Advertising Standards Authority), and the CAP (the Committees of Advertising Practice), who are behind this ban, is very murky. But that’s a topic for another time. For now I’m just going to talk about this nasty little statist who tries to kid us all that’s she’s a warm and wonderful person. I particularly want to single her out because she’s exactly the sort of person of influence driving this.

I am somewhat sympathetic to people like her, people who are unfortunate enough to live pathetic lives in a haze of anxiety and neuroticism because of the constant worry they have about their weight and their romantic prospects.* I’m a bit less sympathetic when they fill column after column with their self-pitying anecdotes. (And who could forget all the mileage she got out of a politician once calling her a ‘slut’.) And that sympathy crumbles completely when it turns out that those same people want control over society and everyone else’s lives and speech in order that life for sad people like them may possibly – and she admits it’s only a small possibility – be slightly less sad.

How much more liberated would our lives have been – not to mention our boobs – if as teenagers we hadn’t had to walk past Eva Herzigova’s magnificently perky breasts and the slogan ‘HELLO BOYS!’ on the way to school every day.

This is – quite seriously – all it is. Bryony Gordon felt unable to compete sexually with one of the most beautiful women in the world (or, more accurately with a mere photo of the most beautiful woman in the world), therefore photos of that beautiful woman should be banned from being shown in public. This is exactly the sort of female-orientated Potemkin Village Fascism that currently rules our world. Comrade Gordon doesn’t like it that there are more beautiful women in the kingdom than her, so she orders that no women who are better-looking than her be allowed in the kingdom, and no photos of them are to be displayed. This isn’t any sort of basis for a free society. It’s the politics of the wicked witch, or Stalin (although even Stalin, who had everyone who irked him killed, didn’t resort to killing men who were better-looking than him).

Just in case sad Bryony decides to come by here I’m scaring her away with this picture.

We are being ruled by self-obsessed screw-ups who want society changed to suit them. Like Caitlin Moran, another apparently lovable and witty screw-up who turned out to be quite a sour and bitter little fascist underneath it all, who wants revenge on the types of people who she blames for her life not quite going to plan. Don’t let the self-deprecating humour fool you. These are Carries who come armed with jokes.

There’s a theory around (can’t remember who put it forward Update: William of Ockham informs me that it was Steve Sailor) that when you analyse what modern feminist writers actually want, the desired outcome always turns out to be a society in which they’re regarded as hotter than other women. I would alter that slightly to say that the desired outcome is a society which just generally suits them.

Radios playing the sort of bland corporate pop they hate all day? Put them in charge and that will all be banned, and their sort of music will get large state funding.

They’re piling on a few pounds? Well then, suggesting that anyone is overweight will be punishable as a criminal offence.

They can’t handle the reality that they’re not as good-looking as they’d like to be? Speech must be forcibly changed so that this truth cannot be expressed.

If you think this interpretation sounds a bit over-the-top, consider this:

The rules will also ban adverts that suggest that transforming your body will make you romantically successful

So not only is the ASA forcing advertisers to only portray the sort of world the ASA wants to see, they’re even banning the presentation of truth. Because, like or or not, transforming your body does, ceterus paribus, increase the probability that you will have romantic success, as everybody knows. But Bryony Gordon, even though she also knows this, doesn’t want anyone to talk about it, because it upsets her, and in case her daughter turns out to be a snowflake too, and it upsets her too. (And we wonder why millennials are like they are.)

A free society cannot function when we are at the mercy of the whims of people who are powerful and selfish but damaged, who see the world through the narrow prism of their own feelings (which is itself one of the main reasons why they can’t cope with the world). We need to go back to being a society where screw-up fascists don’t get to rule us.

*Though she never did sound all that sad when she used to tell her tales of being young and pretty and shagging the likes of Russell Brand. That always sounded more like she was having a fine old time.

They’re not even inbred any more, so what’s their excuse?

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Mrs May had also promised backbenchers on Wednesday that she would not fight the next general election, but it became clear yesterday that her pledge only applied if that election came in 2022.

At least we now know who the stupidest people in the world are. Even stupider than people who believe in Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Even stupider than people who believe in a ‘kinder, gentler politfis’. Even stupider than people who think that the BBC is impartial. I give you…the average Conservative MP. The creature with the smallest brain outside of the insect kingdom

The Conservatives didn’t shoot themselves in the foot. They just blew their own head off.

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Everything comes to an end of its natural life, and it’s now time for the Conservative Party to wither and die. It had become little more than a politically-correct New Labour/ruling class party, given one last chance by the voters in order to deliver Brexit, and it’s blown that. It’s rotten to the core, and owned by the civil service. It’s time for right-wingers, and patriots who’d already given up on Labour,  to move on to another party. UKIP seems the most obvious choice, or perhaps Farage really will come up with a new party.

Perhaps one should never say never, and who knows, maybe in a few months a decent new Tory PM will emerge (May has, after all, been been weakened, and may not survive much longer), and the party will revitalise itself. But for now we need to withdraw our support. Anyway, it’s hard to see how the entrenched interests can be removed. Sometimes a house gets so badly damaged in its internals that it doesn’t make sense to try to fix it up. Move on to a new house.

My main hope is that the Tory Brexiteers will quit and join – or form – another party. That may sound extreme – and it is extreme – but these are extreme times, and there is talk that some of them may bring down the government in the House of Commons, and that’s pretty extraordinary in itself. It doesn’t make much sense to bring down your own party when it’s governing and then to stay in it.

If the politicians won’t get the UK to exit the EU then expect angry mobs to give the politicians their own exit. By coincidence I spent yesterday with a bunch of ex-miners in Mansfield. The type with white vans and English flags in their front windows, who drink in working-men’s clubs. I didn’t meet them for political reasons, but they went on about Brexit a lot, and they were incredibly angry, when normally they’re a jovial bunch. The mood amongst them was literally murderous. They were openly talking about lamposts, and not in a joking way. It’s gone far beyond a ‘loss of trust’ now. We’re verging on civil war.

We’re also on the verge of a hard-left government. These guys hate the new left. They despise progressives and political correctness, and all that. But they rather like old-style socialism, and so voting for Marxists like Corbyn and McDonnell isn’t anathema to them the way it is to me. If there’s no party on the right that appeals to them they’ll go back to Labour, and in that case you’d better make sure you have a lot of pets.

Bad headlines

Hector Drummond Posted on by

The Telegraph’s view:

When they have stopped arguing about Brexit, politicians must focus on boosting productivity

No, they must focus on ending PC culture. That, more than anything else, will kill the country.

Also the Telegraph:

Owen Paterson adds name to rebel list

The Tory Brexiteers are not the rebels. May and the Remainers are the rebels. They’re the ones who have rebelled against democracy. They’re the ones who have abandoned their manifesto commitments. They’re the ones rebelling against us.

The Guardian:

Comedians asked to sign ‘behavioural agreement’ for Soas gig

I’ve been saying for years that SOAS must be shut down, its buildings knocked down, and then the land salted and barricaded off for one hundred years.

May never thought No Deal was an option

Hector Drummond Posted on by

There’s been quite a lot of comment around the last few days saying that May had the right idea a while ago when she said that ‘No Deal was better than a bad deal’, but that she’s now made the mistake of going back on that. For example, Ross Clark says:

At first, she seemed to have the right idea. In her Lancaster House speech of January 2017 she announced her intention to seek a free trade deal with the EU – rather than membership of the single market and customs union – and stated very clearly that “no deal is better than a bad deal”. She understood, so it seemed, that in order to get a good deal out of the EU it was necessary to make it clear that the government was serious about walking away from the negotiating table.

But it was obvious at the time that May was lying about that. It was obvious, at least to the EU negotiators if not to the British commentariat, that she was frightened to death of No Deal, and would do literally anything to avoid it. The fact that the government never undertook any serious preparation for a No Deal exit made it even more obvious that May would sign whatever the EU wanted her to sign, because having ruled out No Deal she had no alternative, and the EU knew it.

So she didn’t ‘inexplicably’ change her tactics. She had the same tactic all along, and lied through her teeth all along.

The other wrong idea that’s getting a new outing is the idea that we should have waited further to trigger Article 50. Dan Hannan has pushed this utterly mistaken idea for two years now, and he’s doing it again:

Every time Theresa May had to make a choice on Brexit, she picked the wrong option. There was the premature triggering of Article 50 – not only before she had carried out contingency preparations for no deal but, unbelievably, before she had a clear idea of what she wanted.

Ross Clark also says this:

She invoked Article 50 too soon, before any significant preparations for a ‘no deal’ scenario had been made.

Delaying the invocation of Article 50 would have been a big mistake. Even delaying it as long as the government did was a big mistake. A very big mistake. As I said at the time, the longer Brexit takes the more time the enemy has to gather its forces and work its propaganda, and overturn the referendum, or thwart it in some way. The longer we delayed Article 50, the more likely it was that it would never be invoked. The delay we did see allowed Gina Miller’s group to get to work and start drumming up support and getting a head of steam, and giving Remainers all over the country hope, whereas if we had invoked Article 50 the day after the referendum, that would never have happened (as the invocation would have been a fair accompli).

What should have happened was that the UK simply announced to the EU the day after the referendum that it was leaving the EU, leaving the Single Market, the Customs Union, the ECJ, etc., and that we had two years to iron out issues like aviation, shipping, tariffs, etc. We should then have got on with preparing for a Managed No Deal, which in that scenario would simply have been called Brexit. If a free trade deal agreement, or the beginnings of one, was negotiated during that period, then great, but that made no difference to our leaving thev EU and all its institutions. But the fact that the government dithered for so long gave the Remainers the chance to start all the bullshit talk about ‘soft Brexit’. It was initial delay that started the rot.

But I was pretty much alone in saying all this. The majority of even the most gung-ho Brexiteers were saying ‘Deal, deal deal’, like that was the most important thing. It never was. Leaving was. That’s what the vote was for. As I used to say — and this saying has now spread, although not enough — we didn’t vote for a deal, we voted to leave. We should have just said immediately that we were leaving everything, which would have prevented Remain from ever rising from the ashes.

While I’m on Ross Clark’s article , another thing needs to be said:

The ECJ’s judgment hands the government a lifeline. It provides the opportunity to rescind Britain’s notice to leave and to restart the process, this time without making the same mistakes. Here is how it could work: after losing the vote on her deal, Mrs May – or her successor, if she is minded to resign – withdraws our intention to leave the EU. It then begins a process of serious planning for a WTO scenario: thinking carefully of how and where customs checks could be carried out, how the issues of possible shortages of food and drugs and so could be resolved. Only then is Article 50 be re-invoked and negotiations with the EU re-started – this time with the EU knowing full-well that we were deadly serious about leaving on WTO terms.

As I understand it the ECJ’s judgement is that Article 50 can be revoked only in the circumstance that it is a genuine revocation, that is, if the UK genuinely intends to stay in the EU long-term, and aren’t just doing to it to gain time. So we can’t revoke it in order to make preparations to re-invoke it. (Apparently there’s also some question marks over the legal status of this judgement as well, but I’m not up to speed on that.)

I should also say that revoking Article 50, even if we were allowed to do it, would be utterly unacceptable to the people of the Britain, because in that scenario we all know that the traitors in Parliament would be fighting tooth and nail to make sure that it was never re-invoked, and there’s a good chance that they’d succeed. So that scenario should be a non-starter. A revocating of Article 50 guarantees only one thing, and that is an angry mob burning down the Houses of Parliament.

Surely even Tory MPs aren’t going to fall for May’s tactics?

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Three weeks ago I wondered whether May was just playing the old last-minute compromise-to-get-it-through game? It’s starting to look she might be.

The country is being held to ransom by about two-hundred idiots who call themselves Conservative MPs, who refuse to cast out the leader that the rest of the country would like to throw off a cliff.

Update: What goes against the last-minute compromise idea, however, is the fact that the EU is saying that the backstop is not going to be renegotiated, and apparently all May is going to get anyway from the EU are ‘reassurances’, not changes. Don’t think ‘reassurances’ is going to cut it.

Put a new lick of paint on an old idea and you can sell it anew

Hector Drummond Posted on by

More polyamory-pushing from the media:

Wednesday Martin, whose latest book Untrue explores “why nearly everything we believe about women and lust and infidelity” is wrong

This is really Tim Newman’s territory, but I wanted to make a few points. Firstly, what is that we believe about ‘women and lust and infidelity’ that’s wrong?

Starting from the premise that we’re only now beginning to understand women’s sexuality properly

Sure, all those thousands of years nobody, including women themselves, had a clue, but now we brilliant moderns with Sociology degrees have discovered the truth that eluded everyone else for so long.

she explains that contrary to popular opinion, women tire of their sexual partners faster than men, and need just as much sexual adventure and novelty as their male counterparts – if not more

But isn’t that just folk wisdom? Women get married and go off their husbands much quicker than the husbands go off them? That’s the basis of a million jokes, after all.

This year has seen, if not an explosion, then at least a creeping insinuation into our culture of the idea that monogamy might not be the only approach to long-term relationships.

Well, yes, and you’re contributing to it. But it’s hardly new. These things go in waves. In the 70s it was called ‘free love’, and it was all the rage.

Meanwhile we’ve had an MP, Labour’s Jess Phillips, recommending that schoolgirls should be taught about orgasms.

I’m starting to think this is not a serious article. (It is the Telegraph Women’s section, after all.)

since female sexual autonomy is, argues Martin, a feminist issue, closely interlinked with the power and autonomy women have in the workforce and in politics, the significance of this online movement should not be overlooked.

Others might argue that since it is a feminist issue, it should be overlooked.

She struggled with monogamy herself in her 20s; more recently, she realised there were data indicating that she was not alone.

How incredibly unobservant would you have to be to only realise this after looking at scientific data? The difficulties that many Western people have with monogamy is one of the most salient features of the Western world since the 1970s. Imagine not noticing the enormous number of films, TV shows and books that are all about infidelities, betrayals, cheating, etc. (Perhaps someone should send her a DVD set of Carla Lane’s series Butterflies.) Imagine not noticing the explosion in divorces since the 70s, and the accompanying boom in singles culture. Has this woman been living under a rock for 50 years?

“What’s so exciting is there’s relatively new science and social science that flies in the face of the holy triumvirate of beliefs about male versus female sexuality: the first being that the male libido is stronger than the female libido

A notion we’ve been continually told is wrong since about 1972.

the second being that women are more naturally monogamous

I’m afraid that one probably is true. But that doesn’t mean that women don’t feel desire for other people. Everyone does. But the circumstances of most women, especially women who want to have children, make leaving monogamy behind a bit more difficult for them than it is for men.

and the third being that women are the enforcers of monogamy and are more cosy and domestic than men,” she says.

That’s still probably true more of women than men. But that was never a black and white issue. We’re talking percentages here. And of course changed social circumstances come into play as well: with taboos against divorce and having children out of wedlock having disappeared, and state support for single mothers having come into being in many Western countries, women have been virtually encouraged to abandon monogamy.

“All this exciting research had come out over the last years, picking apart every one of those supposed truths”

Quantitative research, or qualitative? Because that whole B.S. qualitative sex research thing — a few women talk about their sexual fantasies, and the researcher writes a best-selling book about it — has been with us a long time now.

To this end, her chapter “Bonobos in Paradise” begins with a look at the work of primatologists regarding the sexual behaviour of female simians.

Christ, the bloody bonobos again. Where would all these sexual freedom pioneers be without their bonking bonobos?

A few pages later, Martin has segued into reportage from the front line of female sexual exploration: women-only sex parties, known as Skirt Club, and attended by women who identify as largely heterosexual, many of whom are married to men.

So she’s discovered the orgy, and thinks she’s onto something big. Congratulations Wednesday, you’re very observant, and can see things that nobody else has noticed.

What she witnessed there didn’t only show female sexual fluidity in action in humans; it also busted another myth, she says – that women cheat for emotional connection.

Some women do cheat for that reason, but nobody thinks that all women who cheat do so for emotional connection. Just nobody at all thinks that. The secretary who shags her boss — nobody thinks that’s about emotional connection. The young girls who shag a rock star, or the local handsome football hero — nobody thinks that’s about emotional connection. The middle-aged women who have pick up men in singles bars for anonymous sex — nobody thinks that’s about emotional connection. And so on. She’s fighting against straw women.

Then there’s this caption to a picture:

Jodie Comer played a bisexual, non-monogamous assassin in Killing Eve

Because nothing illustrates (supposed) scientific research better than… a fictional character. (And what did you expect a female assassin to be like? A traditional mum? The mum from the Waltons?)

Martin appears not to realise that monogamy has never been supposed to be easy. For some people it is, but it’s always been acknowledged by virtually everybody that for many people it’s difficult. It’s something that has to be worked at. But for many people the rewards outweigh the downsides. But we all — the ‘we all’ meaning every adult in the world apart from Wednesday Martin, until she did her scientific research — know that it can be a struggle.

But she’s the genius with the new research at her fingertips, so what’s her solution?

“Ok,” she laughs. “So here’s the deal: consensual non-monogamy … “That’s an awful lot of people struggling with monogamy and believing their only option is to remain monogamous and unfulfilled or have an affair and pray it doesn’t blow up your marriage. What if,” she posits, “we looked at struggling with exclusivity after a number of years as simply the baseline, and gave people a whole range of solutions?”

 

She acknowledges consensual non-monogamy would not be the way forward for everyone. “[For] some people that would drive them absolutely insane and it would be a terrible idea,” she says. For those people, she suggests alternatives, such as trying to inject the spark back into the sex life you already have.

 

“The real gift would be to give your spouse permission to have the conversation,” she says. “Why is it better to get a divorce and move on when you simply decide ‘I don’t fancy him any more’, or the spark is gone… What a trail of destruction you might save yourself from creating if you said instead: is there something we can do here?”

 

Marriages, by this reasoning, could be saved.

This reminds me of the view that Keynes attributed to Russell: that ‘human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally’. Yes, why didn’t we think of that. We just have to stop being irrational, and start being rational. It’s so simple really.

Here’s my simple explanation of what Martin says: she has books to sell.

“I didn’t want my friends to see it, so I sold the photo of it to the papers”

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Weird story of the week:

Hotel staff have apologised for creating a “horrifying” effigy of a dead footballer in an attempt at a tribute for his parents that went terribly wrong.

Whuh?

Karen Baker, from Hertfordshire, had arranged for staff from a five-star Jamaican hotel resort to dress a room for friends Faye and Andrew Stephens, whose son Alex died after falling from a balcony on holiday in 2014.

The couple, from Willesden, north-west London, were on holiday with Mrs Baker, Alex’s godmother, to celebrate his birthday this week, a tradition they began after his death.

Instead of a heartfelt tribute, hotel staff created a life-size model made out of clothes lying on the hotel bed, holding a birthday cake.

The tribute definitely did go bizarrely wrong, judging by this photo:

What I don’t get, though, is if the parents were so traumatized by this stupidity, why have they gone to the media about it?

She told the BBC: “When I walked into the bedroom, all I can describe is a dummy body on the bed,” she said.

 

“Staff had gone through my friend’s wardrobe and stuffed the clothes with towels to make it look like a body on the bed. They even put tears down the face and a can of lager in his hand.

 

“I was absolutely horrified – as you can imagine I was sweating and shaking. We just didn’t want our friends to see it.

“We didn’t want our friends to see it”, they say, which I can understand. Yet they’re perfectly happy for the story to be on the BBC, and the photo — the photo you took — to be splashed all over the newspaper. If this was about your friends’ feelings, why didn’t you just play the whole thing down? Why drag it out and make so much of it?

The family have since received a full refund from TUI of £1,300 per person for the five-star holiday.

Perhaps there’s an explanation there.

A fake Christmas tradition

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Apparently Elf on the Shelf is the biggest thing since Christmas turkey:

“We had no idea what on earth we were getting ourselves into.”

 

So says Chanda Bell, one of the three women responsible creating what has become a bigger Christmas tradition in the UK than watching the Queen’s Speech.

It’s so big that I’ve never even heard of it.

Mind you, it probably is bigger than the Queen’s Speech, because who the hell watches that on Christmas Day? Is it 1954 still?

“It’s really about creating these stories for families and being the voice of Santa in the North Pole,” she says. “That’s where our focus is.

Why is this a good thing? Why do we want anyone being the voice of Santa in the North Pole? I don’t. I don’t even like seeing Santa portrayed on screen. Let kids’ imaginations do the work. Get off Santa’s land, he’s not your property.

(The best Christmas films don’t have Santa in them, like ‘Jingle All the Way’.)

 

UKIP have no choice but to go in this new direction

Hector Drummond Posted on by

A lot of people, including Guido Fawkes, have recently been attacking UKIP for its new direction, and pointing out all the UKIP MEPs and other notable party figures who are leaving.

However, it must be noted that UKIP has performed very badly since mid-2016 when the Brexit referendum happened and Farage quit. It’s become virtually invisible to the media (except when the media laughed at its in-fighting). Even with Brexit under threat the party has become ineffective in the extreme. So although the party did amazingly well in the Farage era (mainly due to Farage, it must be said), it has to be acknowledged that the party is on its last legs. It’s a failing entity.

A new broom is needed, and a new approach. Tapping into the anger of the average man on the street over the various sell-outs of the ruling class seems the obvious thing to do (especially seeing as Labour is now run by Trotkyite SJWs, and the Tories are aiding and abetting the spread of political correctness, plus of course most Tory MPs are Remainers). This has worked in Europe, and while the UK isn’t quite Europe in its voting traditions, there is still the same boiling anger at the establishment here, which the old UKIP didn’t have a clue how to harness. Stephen Woolfe, Suzanne Evans, Paul Nuttall, Diane James, Peter Whittle, Douglas Carswell, etc. for all their various virtues, never had any chance of becoming the figurehead of that fightback.

UKIP must become the party of the people. This will, unfortunately, have its downside, but there’s no other way to wrest back control of our country and our lives other than by getting loud and aggressive and channelling some Donald Trump.

The Biscuit Factory Vol. I: Days of Wine and Cheese serialisation. Part 51

Hector Drummond Posted on by

2001-02

Semester 1

Week 5

Sunday

 

It’s Sunday evening, halfway through the first semester of Ren’s second year at Grayvington, and Ren has asked Miles to join him at the pub.

‘Where’s Lucy?’ Miles asks when he arrives.

‘We broke up this afternoon,’ says Ren.

‘That’s too bad. She was nice. Can I fuck her now?’

‘No.’

‘You forbid it. I understand.’

‘No, she just wouldn’t have you, that’s all. I’ve spoiled her for other men.’

‘Meaning you’ve somehow rendered her unattractive to other men, or that other men cannot satisfy her after you?’

‘The latter.’

‘Strange. Most girls don’t like halfwits who wear ladies’ panties.’

‘You don’t need to tell me. Being honest on lonely hearts ads isn’t a good idea.’

‘So you broke up with her, then?’

‘No, she broke up with me.’

‘Has she spoiled you for other librarians now?’

‘No, I’m always up for a spot of rumpy behind the stacks with a pair of glasses. But librarians are sensitive creatures. Too sensitive for brutes like me.’

‘Was it your politics? Your refusal to be left-wing in front her friends?’

‘Actually she didn’t mind that. What she couldn’t take in the end was my endless questioning of everything she said.’

‘I could see that would be a problem with you.’

‘That’s what philosophers do, though.

‘They’re annoying arseholes?’

‘It’s what academics in general do, so don’t think you’re exempt. But yes, particularly philosophers. Always questioning everything.’

‘But there are times and places for that. Perhaps not on a romantic date. Perhaps not in the bedroom.’

‘I’m not like that in the bedroom. It’s the day to day stuff she doesn’t like. She doesn’t understand that for a philosopher, analysing, questioning, even attacking what has been said, is normal. It doesn’t mean you have a low opinion of what was said. In a way it’s a sign of respect that you engage with the person and what they’re claiming. That’s what we teach first-years right from the start. If a philosophy lecturer, or a fellow philosophy student, critically analyses what you’ve said, that isn’t an insult.’

‘Or it isn’t necessarily an insult.’

‘Okay, yes. It takes students a while to cope with it, but they do, and they’re better off for it. You need to be able to cope with criticism in life. You’ll get worse thrown at you in real life. It’s good to be able to have the resources to deal with that, and hold your own, without breaking down in a pile of tears because someone criticised what you said. Of course the progressives will eventually kill it, but for now it’s a good thing for students to be exposed to criticism.’

‘Yeah, especially seeing as students are supposed to be the best and brightest. You’re hardly the best and the brightest if you can’t cope with a bit of criticism.’

‘Not sure “the best and the brightest” really describes our students,’ says Ren.

‘True, but still, there’s not much point doing an Arts degree if you can’t handle a disagreement.’

‘Definitely.’

‘So Lucy has disappointed you. Mind you, she wasn’t a student herself, so you didn’t have that mandate for critical analysis of her conversation.’

‘I wasn’t trying to teach her. I was just being myself. People always say you should be yourself.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t apply in your case. You should never be yourself.’

‘I’ve had this feeling that I’d forgotten something. Maybe that was it.’

‘You’re also a total pedant. That’s something that philosophers have that most other academics don’t. You’re all pedants. Especially you. Doesn’t go down too well with the ladies. Critical analysis is one thing. Endless pedantry is another.’

‘Even my humorous pedantry?’

‘Especially your humorous pedantry. A pedant who’s an earnest bore she could probably take. But the endless hilarious pedantry at her expense she couldn’t, I expect.’

‘It was only occasional. And mostly not at her expense.’

‘Still. She was a sensitive thing, as you say. Was she good in bed?

‘Heavens to Betsy, Miles, a gentlemen does not kiss and tell. Shame on you for asking, you cad.’

‘Sorry. So are you cut up about it?’

‘A bit, yeah, but it wasn’t like it was ever going to be a long-term relationship. But I’m down enough to want to drink tonight.’

‘As opposed to when you’re happy so you want a drink to celebrate? Ren the Celebrator is in the house. Well, at least you won’t have to put up with any more pictures of pussies.’

‘You’re referring, I hope, to the cute cat pictures she liked to stick onto everything?’

‘Despite what you think, I am a gentlemen, and that is what I was referring to. I will not pry into any snap-snap grin-grin Polaroid-type activities, or ask for a look.’

Ren gets some drinks in.

‘So how’s it going with Andrea?’ Ren asks. Andrea works for the Council.

‘Ahhh… I was hoping you weren’t going to ask me that.’

‘Problemo?’

‘Sort of. Let’s see. As you self-identify as a gentleman, despite much evidence to the contrary, I shall but faintly allude to the fact that she’s good in bed.’

‘That’s not faintly alluding to it, that’s baldly stating it.’

‘Whatever. She’s a firecracker in the sack. Insane. But she has all these animal rights posters all over her flat.’

‘As in appeals to save cute fluffy animals? Or militant “Kill all the animal-testers” posters?’

‘You might say they’re from the more radical end of the spectrum.’

‘You sure can pick ‘em. Does she go on about it a lot?’

‘Surprisingly no. She hardly mentions it.’

‘But it’s going to be a problem, isn’t it, seeing as you work in a department that contains numerous monkey-torturers?’

‘Could be.’

‘Has she asked about that?’

‘In passing. I’ve played it down. Important research and all that. Which it is.’

‘Right. Well, I don’t like to interfere…’

‘You think I should dump her?’

‘That’s your business. But there are numerous cliches appropriate for such situations. Don’t let the little head, book and covers, and all that. I know she’s good-looking, but…’

‘She does seem very keen on me.’

‘Lots of girls are keen on you, pretty-boy.’

‘She even likes to come in and see me at work.’

‘Well, it is a fascinating building. All those endless, flouro-lit, dirty corridors in a horrible sixties building. What more could a girl want?’

‘She really comes in because she likes to…’

‘What?’

‘Well…’

‘You mean in your office? What have I told you about being a gentleman? No kissy telly. You’re not Cosmopolitan magazine. And remind me never to sit on a chair in your office again.’

‘By the way, speaking of girlfriends, I have some news about Tanja.’

‘She’s moved to London?’

‘No. She’s found a new boyfriend.’

‘Whoopie-do. Oh. Is it someone we know then?’

‘Tony Shaver.’

‘His full name is Tony Fucking Shaver. Oh God. Tony Fucking Shaver. Shite. I thought I’d never have to see her again. Jesus, it’s my fault, I told her that Tony Fucking Shaver was someone more sympathetic to what she was talking about. She’s probably gone and sought him out. Should have kept my fucking trap shut. Flub-a-dub. So anyway, where’s Andrea tonight?’

‘She’s, er… she’s away.’

‘You’re hiding something. Where is she?’

‘Just a thing she’s got on.’

‘Right. Let me guess. An animal-rights convention? A Socialist Workers Party meeting?’

‘Just some sort of animal-rights meetup. Nothing big.’

‘What is to become of you? Why can’t you find a semi-normal woman and not an escapee from your labs? You want a relationship, not a test subject to write a thesis on.’

‘Like you could have resisted what she was doing to me at that party.’

‘Have your drunken shag, sure, but you don’t have to keep going out with a woman just because she took you into the broom closet at a party and used the vacuum cleaner as a sex aid, or whatever she did.’

‘This is still just a shag. Only a somewhat extended one. Also, she has plenty of coke.’

‘Isn’t she just a bag of fun? Is that why your eyes are bloodshot?’

‘Are they?’

‘You look like you have conjunctivitis.’

‘That’s my story.’

‘So. All it is, you’re saying, is a shag, and you just haven’t quite got around to telling her the shag is finished?’

‘I will tell her. When she gets back.’

‘Unless she comes back with some more coke?’

‘It will die soon enough. It’s purely physical. These things burn out.’

‘So do your nostrils.’

‘If finding a semi-normal woman is so easy, where are yours?’

‘You had to bring that up. I don’t charm them out of the trees to the extent you do.’

‘I’m just going to suck the marrow out of life for a bit longer, that’s all.’

‘Just as long as the police don’t have to break in to find her and her mates on the floor sucking the marrow out of your bones.’

‘Oh pish posh, stop being such an old woman. She’s a healthy young woman who likes to fuck, as is right and proper, and I am obliging her.’

‘Or, she’s a right lunatic who’s up to no good who likes to fuck.’

‘The common denominator is the important bit.’

‘Okay. It’s your dick.’

‘It goes wherever I go, so that’s a safe assumption.’

‘I’m sure it will look nice on her mantelpiece.’

‘Mantelpiece, what a good idea. We haven’t done it there yet.’

‘What do your monkey torturers do to their monkeys? Do you think she’ll try to recreate that with you once she’s got you tied up?’

‘I’ve told her I love animals.’

‘She’s vegan, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have meat in your fridge when she comes around?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was nice knowing you, Miles. Get us a round in before she ransacks your bank account.’