EARTH stands hard as iron. Midwinter in these outer islands is bleak and starkly, madly Presbyterian. Even when the weather improves, we have the prospect of a dreadful year ahead.
Some of the most wildly intolerant people in Britain will jet up here to try to destroy the freedoms that our forefathers fought world wars for. They won’t stop at ferries.
The general election could see these islands on a slide from which they will never recover. Wrong on so many levels. Does anybody care? Doesn’t look like it. We will wait and see. Unhappy new year to us all.
So we need a winter warmer. Something to uplift us. And what better toddy to warm the cockles than yon woman MP in Northern Ireland having a fling with a lad 40 years younger than herself?
She claimed to have been inspired by the Rev Ian Paisley yet ended up in the arms of a 19-year-old who only wanted crumpet to sell in his cafe. That could so easily have been me, you know.
I don’t mean that me and Iris Robinson were ever close. And not just because she is a member of what could be Belfast’s very own version of the Free Presbyterians and the Free Church (Continuing) rolled into one. Eek.
What I mean, of course, is that I, too, went through a brief phase of being able to acutely appreciate the charms of the older woman. OK, maybe not four decades older. Good grief.
Many high-profile women have shown they fancy toyboys. The wrinkly songbird Madonna is at it. When she turned 50, she found a 22-year-old toyboy. Oh Jesus, I hear you say. And, yes, that is, indeed, the brave fellow’s name.
Percy Gibson is knocking on a bit at 44, but is stepping out with a woman 32 years older than himself. Her name is Joan Collins. And wasn’t Sharon Stone’s last boyfriend 26 years younger than her?
All these women saw an opportunity and they didn’t worry about what people thought. They grabbed it with both hands.
If successful women who can get what they want seek out these younger men then maybe there are many other ordinary women without such power and access who are secretly longing to dump their bodach and get themselves a boy toy. And probably outwith the Free Church (Continuing), too.
I blame a certain actress for my longings. A deep and lasting impression was made on teenage Hebridean boys in the 1970s by exposure to posh, senior totty. You will understand when I tell you I’m thinking of Margo Leadbetter, the alter ego of the divinely elegant Penelope Keith in the sitcom The Good Life. Now there was a refined lady with standards.
Margo and Jerry
You just knew Ms Keith would not tolerate poor behaviour of any kind, so you wondered constantly if she was about to put you across her knee. When I say you, I mean me. And I was not the only one. She was the supreme matriarch. The lady, the mother, the teacher.
You may kiss a lady, but on the cheek. You may kiss your mother, as often as you like. You may kiss your teacher. Eh? Only on your very last day in that school and preferably with scores of witnesses present. I still have the 1970s guidelines here.
Boring people at the education department are still likely to get a bit overwrought if you dive in for a full-on snog on the lips in the janitor’s cupboard with Miss every time she helps get you through your prelims.
Maybe that official disapproval sparks the fantasy. Having had some wonderfully inspiring female teachers in my time, maybe it is the effect that they had on us lads all rolled up with the image of Margo Leadbetter keeping order among her scatty neighbours and slightly-dim husband that made her that teeny-weeny bit special. Just like my English teacher.
Just a thought. Mrs Mary MacCormack, my former English teacher, who must have been about 30 when she brought James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty alive for me, may read this. So I would just like to point out that I had other female English teachers, too. I wouldn’t like her to think . . . well, you know what I mean. Mind you, all the others were ugly old bats.
In the interests of balance, I should say it is a two-way thing, apparently. Take Catherine Zeta-Jones. Michael Douglas at 65 is something like 25 years older than her. She says she likes the stability an older man gives. Does she mean stability as in lack of movement? Or financial stability? That must be it. The big house. The parties. And the presents.
Talking of presents, my wee cousin is one of these four-year-olds who just loves getting them – so he can play with the box.
Every birthday and Christmas is the same old story. Whether you buy a guitar, a wee car or a £100 talking robot, the present itself is quickly discarded. Soon he is hooting with raucous laughter playing with the box, getting into it, wearing it and generally jumping up and down on it. Ach, what’s the point?
This Christmas, I thought I would be fly. I knew how to give wee cuz exactly what he wanted. I went down to the Events shop in Cromwell Street and bought a box. Yeah, just a plain cardboard box. I then had them put the empty box into a big glittery gift bag and I sent that to the wee blighter to be opened on Christmas Day.
I was round on Saturday. The wee fellow is absolutely delighted. The hugs I got for giving him the best present of the lot.
But he is not actually interested in the box I sent him. No, the wee meaban is having the best fun of all playing with what it came in – the flipping gift bag.
