Romance Is Dying
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: One mild one only.
Description: Why are women considered the romantic sex?
_____________________________________________________________________
You have to chuckle at Salic Law. Not all of it but the part that insists that fathers pass the baton to their sons, or to their brothers or cousins if they have no sons. The very first world war happened as a result of the death of Charles VI leaving the Habsburg Empire to Marie Theresa in default of male heirs. It had nothing to do with Britain and France but they fought anyway – on opposite sides, as usual.
The action ranged from a backwoods fort near New York to Madras in India – afterwards they were swapped, the French getting their fort back and the East India Company getting Madras. Like many such deals, the consequences took a long time to develop and were totally unexpected. The colonists opposed the return of the fort and this unrest helped to fuel the movement for American independence.
On the other side of the world the return of Madras established the East India Company as the first quango – even poor old Scotland suffered when the semi-government Company wrecked our attempt to trade from Belize.
The funny thing is that, as Roman Law states: ’Mater semper certa est; pater semper incertus est’, which roughly translates as: ‘It’s a wise child that knows its own father’. There was an old fear that a mother frightened during pregnancy would have a child that looked like the object of her terror, so a mother-to-be frightened by a pig would give birth to a baby with a pug nose. I cannot, of course, vouch for the scientific accuracy of that claim but if you look at the ancestral paintings of the aristocracy there is strong visual evidence that the duchess was sometimes frightened by the footman.
Things got out of hand during the Middle Ages when the birth chamber of the nobility would be crowded by officials checking that there was no attempt to pass off the lusty son of a milkmaid for the sickly daughter of the princess. The weakness of the system was that fewer people were around to observe the conception. The ancient Egyptians preferred to be ruled by a man but his legitimacy derived from his mother.
I suppose it is a biological necessity to have women choosy about their mates while men are chasing anything they can catch. Human babies need nurturing for a long time after they are born so a woman has to put reliability at the top of her list of desirable masculine traits. I can accept that women are the hard headed sex but where did they get the reputation for being romantics?
Men can convince themselves that the tattiest sow’s ear is a silk purse – at least until they have satiated their lust. Things were not so bad when the fair sex stuck to the conventions but feminism has left men floundering. The biggest headache is ‘You know’. I freely admit that most of the time I most emphatically do not know.
Give flowers to a lady you want to get closer to and she shoves them in the bin: ‘you know I get hay fever’. It is no better with chocolates: ‘you know I’m trying to lose weight’ and into the bin they go. You might have more luck with tickets for a music festival: ‘you know I love (insert name of her favourite performer)’. You get there on the Friday and she goes for a look round while you put up the tent. Next time you see her is on the Sunday afternoon behind the toilets, stoned and with her knickers stuffed down her cleavage.
Even their romantic literature has nothing in the least romantic about it. It consists of a young woman, innocent of the merest thought of sin, boldly going where no woman in her right mind would go. Her continuing mission: to be laid by as many sheiks, pirates, playboys, financiers and other riff-raff as can be fitted into a couple of hundred pages.
I accept that women feel insecure about their faces, figures and personalities, but is it really necessary for them to force male attention to their lady-bits? Very few women smoked until the first mini-skirts became fashionable before tights were much used off the stage of revue theatres. White thighs above stockings were commonplace but there was a possibility that men might miss the show. Going upstairs on a bus was a sure fire way of getting attention and smoking was an acceptable reason for climbing the steep stairs to the upper deck.
It took a special kind of man to notice the colour of her eyes in these circumstances. A little later they started burning their bras, freeing nipples to poke enticingly through sufficiently thin tops. It backfired on them when men looking at armpit height to ogle had to look down to about waist level to get their thrill. The response by women was to abandon showing in favour of hiding so they now wear underwired bras thickly padded over the nipples.
They do not, naturally, want us to forget boobs altogether so they have adopted cleavage as the latest lure. They are devious in ways that I have yet to figure out; whether it is the cut or the pattern it is a fact that their dresses draw the eye to their gorgeous bums before you notice their sagging bellies. A generously proportioned lady once told me that she liked a minute or two naked in bed arranging her folds in the most alluring manner before admitting her swain.
My advice to men is to treat women the way you do a shopping trip to an oriental bazaar. In the first place, do not rely solely on your eyes to judge the goods – you have to get your hands on at least part of them. In the second place, remember that the price is negotiable and finally be prepared to walk away and try the next stall where practically identical goods are on sale.
If you do get to know a lady well enough to take her out, she will blandly send you to refill her half-empty glass while she checks out the stud that has just walked in. Even when you are on one knee proposing to her, she will be flirting with the guy standing behind you.
I thought I had plumbed the depths of female depravity until the other day when I was at one of those team building sessions that help to reduce company tax bills. We were spending two nights in a five star hotel at their expense with the day between devoted to boring talks and even more boring games that would reveal our inner selves.
The best bit, as usual, was the first evening when we crowded into the hotel ballroom for a buffet and as much booze as we could cope with. The event organisers for the company were, of course, making notes about who was drinking how much and who was flirting with whom but when you have been to a few of these junkets you can spot them a mile off.
It was pretty crowded by half past nine and when I stepped back to avoid a waitress with a tray full of curling sandwiches, I bumped into the person behind me. I turned to apologise and found that I was inches away from a pretty, conservatively dressed lady. She said that she could see that I was innocent of any intent to bump into her. Her voice was as classy as her outfit and I was just drunk enough to hope for a romantic encounter. I should have known better!
“If your heart is as soft as your breast, I would like to get to know you better.”
“If your prick is as hard as your elbow, come to room three-o-four in ten minutes!”
Swearwords: One mild one only.
Description: Why are women considered the romantic sex?
_____________________________________________________________________
You have to chuckle at Salic Law. Not all of it but the part that insists that fathers pass the baton to their sons, or to their brothers or cousins if they have no sons. The very first world war happened as a result of the death of Charles VI leaving the Habsburg Empire to Marie Theresa in default of male heirs. It had nothing to do with Britain and France but they fought anyway – on opposite sides, as usual.
The action ranged from a backwoods fort near New York to Madras in India – afterwards they were swapped, the French getting their fort back and the East India Company getting Madras. Like many such deals, the consequences took a long time to develop and were totally unexpected. The colonists opposed the return of the fort and this unrest helped to fuel the movement for American independence.
On the other side of the world the return of Madras established the East India Company as the first quango – even poor old Scotland suffered when the semi-government Company wrecked our attempt to trade from Belize.
The funny thing is that, as Roman Law states: ’Mater semper certa est; pater semper incertus est’, which roughly translates as: ‘It’s a wise child that knows its own father’. There was an old fear that a mother frightened during pregnancy would have a child that looked like the object of her terror, so a mother-to-be frightened by a pig would give birth to a baby with a pug nose. I cannot, of course, vouch for the scientific accuracy of that claim but if you look at the ancestral paintings of the aristocracy there is strong visual evidence that the duchess was sometimes frightened by the footman.
Things got out of hand during the Middle Ages when the birth chamber of the nobility would be crowded by officials checking that there was no attempt to pass off the lusty son of a milkmaid for the sickly daughter of the princess. The weakness of the system was that fewer people were around to observe the conception. The ancient Egyptians preferred to be ruled by a man but his legitimacy derived from his mother.
I suppose it is a biological necessity to have women choosy about their mates while men are chasing anything they can catch. Human babies need nurturing for a long time after they are born so a woman has to put reliability at the top of her list of desirable masculine traits. I can accept that women are the hard headed sex but where did they get the reputation for being romantics?
Men can convince themselves that the tattiest sow’s ear is a silk purse – at least until they have satiated their lust. Things were not so bad when the fair sex stuck to the conventions but feminism has left men floundering. The biggest headache is ‘You know’. I freely admit that most of the time I most emphatically do not know.
Give flowers to a lady you want to get closer to and she shoves them in the bin: ‘you know I get hay fever’. It is no better with chocolates: ‘you know I’m trying to lose weight’ and into the bin they go. You might have more luck with tickets for a music festival: ‘you know I love (insert name of her favourite performer)’. You get there on the Friday and she goes for a look round while you put up the tent. Next time you see her is on the Sunday afternoon behind the toilets, stoned and with her knickers stuffed down her cleavage.
Even their romantic literature has nothing in the least romantic about it. It consists of a young woman, innocent of the merest thought of sin, boldly going where no woman in her right mind would go. Her continuing mission: to be laid by as many sheiks, pirates, playboys, financiers and other riff-raff as can be fitted into a couple of hundred pages.
I accept that women feel insecure about their faces, figures and personalities, but is it really necessary for them to force male attention to their lady-bits? Very few women smoked until the first mini-skirts became fashionable before tights were much used off the stage of revue theatres. White thighs above stockings were commonplace but there was a possibility that men might miss the show. Going upstairs on a bus was a sure fire way of getting attention and smoking was an acceptable reason for climbing the steep stairs to the upper deck.
It took a special kind of man to notice the colour of her eyes in these circumstances. A little later they started burning their bras, freeing nipples to poke enticingly through sufficiently thin tops. It backfired on them when men looking at armpit height to ogle had to look down to about waist level to get their thrill. The response by women was to abandon showing in favour of hiding so they now wear underwired bras thickly padded over the nipples.
They do not, naturally, want us to forget boobs altogether so they have adopted cleavage as the latest lure. They are devious in ways that I have yet to figure out; whether it is the cut or the pattern it is a fact that their dresses draw the eye to their gorgeous bums before you notice their sagging bellies. A generously proportioned lady once told me that she liked a minute or two naked in bed arranging her folds in the most alluring manner before admitting her swain.
My advice to men is to treat women the way you do a shopping trip to an oriental bazaar. In the first place, do not rely solely on your eyes to judge the goods – you have to get your hands on at least part of them. In the second place, remember that the price is negotiable and finally be prepared to walk away and try the next stall where practically identical goods are on sale.
If you do get to know a lady well enough to take her out, she will blandly send you to refill her half-empty glass while she checks out the stud that has just walked in. Even when you are on one knee proposing to her, she will be flirting with the guy standing behind you.
I thought I had plumbed the depths of female depravity until the other day when I was at one of those team building sessions that help to reduce company tax bills. We were spending two nights in a five star hotel at their expense with the day between devoted to boring talks and even more boring games that would reveal our inner selves.
The best bit, as usual, was the first evening when we crowded into the hotel ballroom for a buffet and as much booze as we could cope with. The event organisers for the company were, of course, making notes about who was drinking how much and who was flirting with whom but when you have been to a few of these junkets you can spot them a mile off.
It was pretty crowded by half past nine and when I stepped back to avoid a waitress with a tray full of curling sandwiches, I bumped into the person behind me. I turned to apologise and found that I was inches away from a pretty, conservatively dressed lady. She said that she could see that I was innocent of any intent to bump into her. Her voice was as classy as her outfit and I was just drunk enough to hope for a romantic encounter. I should have known better!
“If your heart is as soft as your breast, I would like to get to know you better.”
“If your prick is as hard as your elbow, come to room three-o-four in ten minutes!”
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned eight novels and many short stories. His five latest novels, The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths and Loyalty, are McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned eight novels and many short stories. His five latest novels, The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths and Loyalty, are McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.