The Virginity Project

Gone but not forgotten

Almost exactly two years ago, I set off in my trusty car to interview my ninety one year old aunt in Cornwall. Interviewing people about the loss of virginity is one thing, asking your elderly aunt to tell you about the first time she had penetrative sex is another. This didn’t phase me. I was on a mission. I wanted this story.

When I had my road to Damascus moment on a beach in California a few years ago, it was the historical angle of this project that first got me going. We live in a unique country. Could I reflect that by knitting together the stories of the people that live in it?

I could hardly wait to find out. Months went by and I got a few stories under my belt but I couldn’t push past the age of sixty five. The truth was that I didn’t know that many people who were really old. Now, back in the day it was a different story.

I spent some of my twenties working with Alzheimer’s patients. This is not an exclusively ‘elderly’ disease, but in my case, these were all octogenarians. I rushed my daily duties to get to the floor and sit with the old folk. They had stories like you wouldn’t believe, admittedly ones they would repeat on a regular basis but I didn’t care. They were stories worth telling once, twice, or even three times at a sitting.

That was then, this was now. Contacts were long gone and grandparents had all departed. Except for Aunty Betty. No matter that we were not related by blood – she married my grandmother’s brother in 1940. She was, by a long shot, one of the most popular members of my family. Loved and respected in equal measures by my grandmother and her four daughters – one of whom is my mother.

A couple of phone calls was all it took and several weeks later, on a sunny morning, me and my mother leapt, Starsky and Hutch style into my Renault five to drive south. That’s not quite true. In a strange reversal of roles, I started the car and asked my mother the following question. ‘Where’s your coat?’

‘Oh’, she giggled with a daft look on her face, ‘I forgot it!’ Well you better un-forget it because it’s not gonna be warm where we’re going.

It wasn’t, but it was wild and it was beautiful and it felt great to escape the city despite nagging doubts at what we were about to do. But Aunty Betty had agreed to this and it wasn’t a surprise. She was universally known as a good sport, a game bird, the person who would always say what everyone else was thinking. She didn’t pull her punches. She was also as sharp as a pin.

‘I’ve got one foot on a banana skin and the other in the grave’. That had been her answer that morning when her hairdresser enquired after her health. She seemed pleased with that response as she swayed precariously, like a giant with stiff legs, across a sea of carpet, taking hold of trinket-laden tables and sideboards as she went.

She sunk into a grateful chair and we sat drinking cups of tea and eating cakes. What else to do with a surrogate granny? How I miss those days. I don’t look back much, but if I could go anywhere, it would be back to my grandmother’s house and her undivided attention over a game of Halma. No siblings, no parents, just me, my granny and a board game. Tea on a tray followed and the comfort of a tucked up bed. What’s not to love?

We can’t rekindle the past but we can make the most of the present. As I pushed the button on the tape player and Aunty Betty began to speak, I realised that this was more than a story. This was the documentation of the past that made all our presents possible. My grandmother had had seven brothers. All of them now dead. Aunty Betty was the last person who would ever be able to tell us about these people – and the act that produced a cousin for my mother.

‘On the first night I might tell you, I thought this is much ado about nothing. But then I got to like it.’

She only ever had one child but she probably had quite a lot of sex. She may have come from the dark ages but that never stopped this lady from living her life to the max. Uncle Teddie had been in the air force. Long after we got past the sex talk and the tape had stopped rolling, my great aunt dropped the real clanger.

‘What were you and Uncle Teddie doing in Germany after the war?’ My mother asked her.

‘Oh, we were spying dear’.

Of course you were. Silly us. There followed facts that I won’t publish here. Years might have passed but I know that the publication of such details would give my mother the complete and utter willies. Let’s just say that the ‘activity’ involved a camera, a lot of ‘picnics’ and a proud young couple taking pictures of their first born outside a selection of prominent German buildings.

My mother might be spooked but my aunt wouldn’t have given two hoots. Mainly because within six weeks of this interview taking place, she passed away. I believe that she knew she was going to die. If I was conscious of this chance to document detail, she was more so. That’s partly why she agreed to take part but it was something else too. I think it gave her a last chance to review a fabulously happy marriage.

‘The whole point about marriage is that you grow into a deep friendship. You grow older together and you become deeper friends. Teddie and I were very deep. We were very good friends.’

He was the bomber pilot, brave but sensitive. A man who suffered with stomach problems for the whole of his life, because despite the pride he took in his wartime role, he never got over the thought of the lives he crushed during night time raids over German soil. Women, children, people just like you and I. He was the dashing uncle that my aunts all loved and she, the charismatic young woman that he chose for his wife. Friendship, she opined, was the key to their success.

I had no idea of how many roads, physical and otherwise, I would travel with this project. I have seen life – mainly other people’s, at its best and its worst, and all through the telling of stories. This is the real deal. This is what makes me me and you you.

But I am just a piece of the jigsaw, a patch in the quilt of this life. And so are you. Go out there and ask your people to tell you stories. Do it before its too late. Because no matter how many sophisticated forms of communication we devise, when the old die, the past goes with them. Document it today.

It’s the way you tell ‘em…

Der, der, der, derrrr!!

Remember the man - and his red book? Remember the theme tune? The one that would break out into a joyful climax of musical splendour, just as that week’s gimp, ‘ I had absolutely no idea that this was going to happen’, would step out from under the sweaty lights of a television studio only to be greeted with a roll call of life in the form of friends, neighbours, aunts, uncles, and pets? All freshly washed and brushed, and here for YOU! You wonderful person!

‘This is Your Life’ was the televisual highlight of our week when we were growing up, and yes, I do realise how bad that sounds – but its true – and it worked for one simple reason. There isn’t a person alive who didn’t watch that programme and wonder what their own life might look like under the spotlight. There isn’t a single one amongst us who didn’t sometimes think to themselves, I wonder which highly amusing anecdotes they might they pull to illustrate my own rather marvellous life? What frothy vignettes might they select to speak volumes about ME?

Because how we see ourselves, and what we actually are may well be two different things, but stories marry these ideas together. We create stories to explain ourselves, to illustrate ourselves. Sometimes we stick to them for years, and occasionally, over the passage of time, we allow them to change. As Benedict Carey, a journalist with the NY Times suggested in an article earlier this year, ‘every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life – and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave,’

Carey goes onto confirm something that I have long held to be true – that people are wonderful storytellers, or, as he puts it, ‘the human brain has a natural affinity with narrative construction’. I concur. As you probably know, for the past eighteen months, I have been interviewing a cross section of people about virginity loss, about the circumstance which surround this event, what do people think when they look back at this time…and what changes along the way?

I am a lucky person with a brilliant brief because there can be few moments that will elicit such an array of emotion as the recollection of virginity loss. Music is frequently involved. Heightened senses remember the tiniest of details. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told precisely what piece of music was playing in the background as someone gently slipped their way into adulthood, ‘The Ace of Spades’, by Motorhead, being one such unforgettable instance.

The point is, that losing virginity in and of itself is frequently dull, unexciting, un-sexual even. What brings the story alive is the sheer dichotomous detail, the joy and the pain, the fear, excitement, anticipation, naivety, expectation and frequent plain stupidity that helps to push and pull this experience into a 360 degree reality that ends up becoming our story. Our passage into adulthood, our crazy, fucked up, beautiful, loving, rubbish, thrilling first time. Lets face it, its never going to be a dull story.

What makes it all the more special, at least in my case, is that there is very little room for artifice. A while back I did a podcast with my good friend, Charon QC. Charon is a man of the law. ‘Do you think that people tell you the truth when you interview them?’ he asked me. I was stumped. ‘Yes, of course I do’, I answered. ‘Because there is nothing to be gained by lying.’

Who’s going to know? Names are changed, even place names are swapped. There is nothing to connect anyone to themselves and their story. The real truth is that people gravitate towards the tape recorder because they have something to say, whether they know it or not – and they frequently surprise themselves with what comes out.

Last year, I encountered a young woman whom I shall call Jane. ‘I’ve found someone for you to interview’, my friend Nick said to me one day. ‘I work with her and she’s dying to tell you her story’. Apparently it was a ‘fairy tale’, the experience that she had always dreamt of. I was intrigued, who wouldn’t be. This was a first.

I went to her house one evening to commit the tale to tape. And yes, sometimes I do feel a bit like that creepy character out of ‘Perfume’. Stealing people’s inchoate sexual secrets, taking their tales and editing them down to the very essence of themselves..…a post for another day no doubt. I rung the doorbell and an attractive young woman answered the door. I knew straight off that this would not be a short story. Don’t ask me how you know, you just do.

And so it was that we sat on the sofa, I pushed the record button and off we went into fantasyland and the journey of a person with a perfect tale to tell. But here’s the thing. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even close, but she didn’t realise that until I, a person with nothing vested in any particular outcome, marched into her life and asked her to tell me her story out loud, for the very first time. It was no nightmare either. It was simply the tale you would expect from a lovely teenager, desperately in love - desperate being the operative word, and ready to do anything to ensure that her perfect boyfriend had perfect sex with her in the perfect place whilst wearing the perfect outfit – before he dumped her. Recalling these details bought the facts to life and as she finished, I could see that there were tears in her eyes.

Storytelling can be a powerful experience and for the first time I felt uneasy. Who am I to expose people’s dreams for what they really are. But I hadn’t planned it to happen this way. I genuinely wanted to hear what a real fairy tale looked, sounded and felt like. It’s now a year since I met Jane and yesterday I phoned her because I wanted to know what had happened after that experience. Had the ‘treatment’ of her own life story changed as a result?’

‘It didn’t make me feel happy’, she started. ‘I felt exhausted and confused after you left, in fact I called my ex boyfriend straight away. But it felt like a release. I unravelled feelings that I was too scared to admit to at the time. Telling you the story doesn’t change anything, that’s the disappointing part, but I know that it took me to a different point of understanding.’

Story telling fulfils many functions. For some of us it’s a gentle way of explaining to our children how our world works. For many, it’s a crucial method of documentation, a way of preserving historical and cultural detail so that future generations can see what we see. Story telling is also a way of unpacking ourselves, of making sense of our inner world, and of taking a step backwards, in order that we continue forward. My work, at least for this day, is done.

It could be you!

Citizens of the world, I invite you to have your say.

Do you read some of the stuff on this Blog and think ‘what a load of old tripe’? Or have you got something to add? Either way, I would love to hear from you. Perhaps you might like to take a trip down your very own memory lane - or throw a question out into cyber space? What does virginity loss mean to you? Something? Nothing? Or everything? Maybe you have lost virginity of an entirely different kind lately. As a friend once famously said, ‘each time I make love to a new woman, I feel like I am losing my virginity all over again’. Agree? Whatever you think, if you have a story to tell, or just want to heckle, drop me a line.

All names will be changed to protect identity. Get scratching comrades.

katemonroe@yahoo.com

Cheap day return....

A great day has arrived. Look at these two little beauties that were parked up, side by side in my inbox last week. The bizarre thing is that they are completely unrelated, therefore proving the theory that the moment you lose the will to live at the metaphorical bus stop, six buses will arrive at once. The first, below, comes from a Welsh man whom I will soon be interviewing:

‘Heard about the project today. It's an interesting subject for many reasons........rather intriguingly, it lead me to think about how I lost my own virginity. I'm 29 now and it happened when I was 16 - I paid a prostitute. I'd love to tell you about the experience as I've never fully shared it with anyone. How surprising then, to see your blog when I got to work and to see you are looking for someone just like me.’

Yes, I am!!

And the next, short, but sweet, is for your eyes only:

Email no. 2:

‘Are you still looking for someone who lost his virginity to a Prostitute? I did.

In 1965, I was sixteen and I bought a motorbike. We lived in rural Sussex so it gave me great freedom, I could get to London in an hour and spend the day there. When you’re sixteen, very few girls of your own age want to have sex with you, so I went to strip clubs where you could see everything for £1.50. Even then it seemed a cheap day out.

There was no peer pressure. I was entirely motivated by hormones, I still am. As I walked through Soho, I saw lots of shops with multiple doorways. Finally, one day I plucked up courage and pushed the one labelled 'French model, please walk up'. The door was opened by a 'maid' who was about sixty, who showed me into the 'model's’ room.

She was French, and aged about fifty. She said that undressing was extra, but she was charmed by my schoolboy French. She charged me two pounds and asked for a tip for the maid - ten shillings. She lay down on the bed and held my penis to get me hard. She wouldn't let me kiss her, but we had sex and I was no longer a virgin.

I was a bit ashamed - and a bit excited. I wouldn’t admit to my friends that I had to pay for it and I certainly wouldn't tell my parents. It didn't do me any harm, but then I think that losing your virginity is only one part of your developing sexuality. I have always had a high sex drive and my various partners have indulged my sexual demands, by which I mean, I like my partners to dress and act as prostitutes, amongst other things. My father was the same - he found it difficult to have sex with my mother after we children were born and took a mistress. A mistress for sex – and a wife for cooking and parenting. I always found it easy to combine all the roles in my partner. This is all getting very Freudian.’

Like my trip back to Victoriana the other day, this story says far more about the changing faces of women than it does about men that pay money to lose their virginity. For David’s father, it was beyond the pale to imagine his wife in the role of sexual seductress once she had given birth to their children. The solution? A Mistress, of course. Today’s mother and wife will manage both these parts to perfection with a cameo role thrown in – that of glittering career woman. Blimey, it’s a busy old life.

To bee or not to bee..

For anyone who reads this blog regularly, you will know that I have been hot on the trail of a man who lost his virginity to a prostitute for an age. The words ‘bee’ and ‘bonnet’ spring to mind. You might also know that as a result of this blog, I correspond with a number of people, old and young, who for one reason or another, have not lost their virginity.

To this end, one of them recently signed off an email to me with the following statement…..

‘P.S. I fleetingly considered visiting a prostitute so that you could finally get the story you want, but then thought about it again, it would just be weird! lol! :-)’

Bless you M, you know who you are..

Part 2 of the prostitute post...

I did some market research last week, not for myself, but more like the kind where you get paid hard cash to talk about washing powders, socks and cat food. On this occasion, the client was a well-known brand of contraceptive and the discussion, predictably, my sex life. By some kind of divine intervention, serendipity or perhaps just sheer co-incidence, the venue was the exact same one that I have booked on several occasions to interview people about virginity loss. Same room, same table, same chair, different interviewee – me.

All I had to do was to sit and answer questions about love, relationships, intimacy and ‘female empowerment’. Now, perhaps you think I am going to tell you about how hard it was, how tormented I felt by the turning of the tables and about my fresh resolution never to interview anyone about the vagaries of their intimate lives again. Think again. Like many of my subjects, I found the experience strangely pleasing. The mental equivalent of tidying cupboards, it felt much like putting my house in order and an altogether not entirely unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. The cash helped push things along too.

It did make me cast my mind back to someone I interviewed in this very room, almost a year ago to the day. It was 90 degrees outside in the urban jungle, (I know, I know), and the heat rose to fill this Soho attic with a wet, sweaty intensity the like of which I have not experienced before or since. Cold drinks were drunk, surplus to requirement clothing removed, but it was no good. I didn’t help matters by turning off the fan. Yes, I turned off the fan. It was loud and I knew I couldn’t incur the wrath of my transcriber by allowing it to leave its word-destroying whir on my tape. I didn’t want to, believe me, but when you’ve got one shot to get a story you want, you’re not gonna waste it.

The air was thick like treacle as I attempted to wend my way to the heart of an unusual story. It’s owner was a married man in his early fifties - who has never had sex. At least not the penetrative type, the kind we use to mark the ‘loss’ of virginity and the universal step into adulthood.

It felt like a cross between caporeira and a boxing match as we sparred and I sought to find a way to deliver the line. The one question that would unlock the padlock to the puzzle and unleash the answers we both wanted to hear. I don’t think I got there on that occasion. This was a man at the beginning of a big journey. Agreeing to tell a stranger his innermost secrets was probably the first step, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.

As I bought the interview to a close, I thanked him for taking part. ‘Thanks for allowing me to grill you’, I said, without thinking. I laughed, because if his internal organs were not lightly poached by the intensity of the heat, I would have been very surprised. I had literally grilled him alive.

Fast-forward a year and it’s a different story. Rain is involved but we won’t dwell on that, and I am in the hot seat. As we finish up, my interviewer and I discuss my own research and I mention some of the people I still hope to interview.

‘Oh, if you’re looking for a man who lost his virginity to a prostitute, just give the office a ring’, he says.

‘How do you mean?’ I ask

‘Well, it’s a market research company isn’t it. They can find you anyone you need, of any demographic. Just ring them up and tell them what you’re looking for, pay them eighty quid and they’ll find him for you.

Uh? You mean it’s that easy? After all this, it turns out that I can order exactly what I want from an instant catalogue of human experience?

I am pleased. But strangely downcast. In that moment, I am hit with a blinding truth. I enjoy the search. I like the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the highs and the lows. I have no idea what is around the corner but the possibilities thrill me, excite me, because when you do find what you want, you know you got there all by yourself and it feels fucking great. I may yet take him up on his offer, but for the time being, the game remains very much on. I am still searching for something quite specific. I will know exactly what it is when I find it.

Be prepared....

Six weeks I have been freelancing and not a sniff of a new story. Until yesterday that is.
It went something like this….

Creative guy: Are you here next week?
Me: No.
Creative guy: What are you doing?
Me: My own work.
Creative guy: What’s that then?

I explain what I do with the rest of my life.

Him: Uh, really? God, you should hear the story about how my kid brother despatched his virginity…
Me: Oh yeah, how’s that then?
Creative guy: He went on a scout trip to Holland and lost his virginity to a prostitute.

Me: Er, excuse me?

Creative guy: Yeah, he was thirteen and he lost his virginity to a prostitute on a scout camp trip.

Sweet mother of god, do you know how long I have been searching for this story? When it arrives, it belongs to a thirteen year old Boy Scout. You could not make this stuff up. People think I do, but I don’t. I don’t need to.

A man who lost his virginity to a prostitute. It’s an angle. It may not be everybody’s angle, but it is an angle nonetheless. Unsurprisingly, no one wants to talk about it. Perhaps they fear I will judge them, (not a chance); maybe they think I will be embarrassed, (ditto the above). Either way, I have asked friends, interviewees and relatives. I have asked friends, interviewees and relatives to ask their friends. I have emailed prostitutes and hung around in chat rooms. I have searched long and hard for this holy grail of stories, all to no avail. Until now.

Me: (trying to contain excitement), so do you think your brother would be prepared to spill the beans? I would be very discreet, names changed, places changed and all that?

Creative guy: Yeah, quite possibly.

Me: where does he live?

Creative guy: San Francisco.

Me: oh.

Bum.

Journey to the centre of the man...

After a lifetime’s hiatus, the sun came out last Sunday morning, just as I shoved my car into gear and hit the high road towards Brighton. My mission? To interview eighty-four year old Tony, customer of my friend, Paul, and owner of a story worth telling.

To be frank, my head felt blonde. I had been to a friend’s wedding the night before, (more on that another time), and I felt muffled, deadpan, not quite the full ticket. Certainly not the ticket that collects the winning story thats for sure.

I rarely think too much beforehand about what I am about to do. Beyond a short question writing session, I wing it. I don’t often know the person I’m going to meet, I have limited prior knowledge and everyone is different anyway. You don’t know what you’re going to get until the door swings open and the voice on the end of the phone reveals itself.

I do know that I need to perform. There is no other way to the heart of a tale. I am cheerful and light, with no outward sign of nerves. No matter how I might feel inside, the surface is another story. My interviewees need to feel relaxed, comfortable and ready to talk. I must be the mirror.

I didn’t feel like the mirror on Sunday. I felt like the raggedy old fox that lives in my garden. Wide-eyed, jittery and wan, he stares me out every morning if I wake up early enough to look out the window. I felt like the fox that wants to lie down and have a nice afternoon nap – probably in the hole that he keeps trying to dig under the euphorbia bush. As someone once famously said, the only way out of this, Kate, is into it. And it’s true. You can’t skim the surface. You have to dive in. This is not a sit-and-nod-in-the right-places situation. Getting a story is a journey in itself. There’s no turning back.

Two hours later, I arrived. ‘I took an unscheduled detour, lets leave it at that’. The blue-eyed man laughed as he led me into the kitchen and began making tea. I was in a hillside bungalow overlooking the sea, just a couple of miles along from Brighton pier with its funfair, doughnuts and fried fish.

‘Don’t worry dear, she’s just excited to see you’, said Tony, as I stepped over a small yapping dog that was making repeated attempts to join forces with my knees. The face of a fat fluffy cat peered down at its canine friend. ‘I sit on sideboards and laps’, it seemed to say, ‘floors are just so last year’. I fought the urge to brush it down, but only because I don’t like pets on surfaces, its attitude seemed entirely correct.

Tea made, I offered to carry the tray for a man that didn’t look his eighty-four years. ‘Leave it out dear, don’t start all that’, he smiled.

We sat down and I had time to look around. A woman once lived here. Tony’s wife of forty-seven years. She passed away four years ago, but her presence was all over the shop. Trinkets, photographs and clocks decorated the striped wallpaper of the lounge. Dog toys, dog brushes and more pet hair than Mrs Thompsen would ever permit, adorning the furniture and floor.

Now her husband sat before me, sometimes looking at me and occasionally way past, as we stepped back together, to a land that time forgot. I can’t expect him to go by himself. I must help him get there, facilitate the journey, by asking the right questions and easing out the words, by watching for the response, and seeing how much further we can go. To a place where a man had no idea what an erection was for. Only when he first made love did he have any idea of its duel purpose. To a war, which took him around Europe and into the arms of varying nationalities and types of women. Eventually he came back to England, and to a time where a lady would still move house because she could not face the thought of the landlord’s son seeing her knickers hanging on the line. Thankfully, for Tony, she got over it.

Some people see white hair and wrinkles when they look at old people. I see stories. I always have. This man had stories and the effect was like hypnosis. Two and a half hours passed by, but it seemed like ten minutes. I might think that I am the one leading the dance, but often, it is I who is happy to be taken by the hand and taken for a trip down memory lane.

You go somewhere with people sometimes. I go to places with complete strangers. And as Tony said, ‘what are you doing coming down here and interviewing me anyway? You don’t know who I am, I might be eighty four but you’re not very big, I could be a nut-job for all you know.’ He’s got a point. He could be, but he wasn’t.

By the time we were finished, I could see quite clearly the boy inside this man. The sharp blue eyes helped, but its more than an aesthetic, it’s the cat with the attitude, it’s a spirit or a way of life. Whatever it is, this man had it. In bucketsful.

Another famous saying sprung to my mind. Parting is such sweet sorrow. We had led each other a merry dance and now it was time to go. Like the act of love itself, the more you commit to the moment, the harder it is to walk away when you are finished. I sensed it before he said it. I’ll miss you when you’re gone dear. Come back and visit again.

I will.

About a boy...

‘I’ve found an interviewee for you’, said Paul, old friend and Brighton resident. As a result, this weekend sees me get back, Dukes of Hazard-style, through the open window of my red Renault 5, and onto the trail of a hot story. I’ve been on the hunt for this one for a while. An older man. Eighty-four years old to be exact. I’ve had a few stabs at this story but none have quite hit the mark. I have hit the giddy age related heights of ninety and one-hundred-and-one when it comes to women but men of this generation are a different breed. It is a rare man indeed who is prepared to sit and tell a young(er) woman, the intimate details of his sex life.

‘Don’t worry about Tony’, said Paul last week, ‘he’ll tell you anything. He loves talking about sex. He swears like a trooper as well’. Maybe he does to you, but he was the model of perfect gentlemanly manners when I called to make my arrangements. He was right about the talking though. I had to stop him from telling me the best bits on the phone. ‘Bring your pad and pencil love, and I’ll see you on Sunday’.

Later I phoned Paul to let him know what time I'll get to Brighton. ‘I don’t want to worry you’, he said, ‘but I spoke to Tony the other day and he is bit worried.’ ‘Worried about what’, I asked, guessing as much. ‘Well, he’s worried that he’ll be too truthful. He’s worried about exposing himself.' Women, as we know, are adept at speaking an emotional language. We are encouraged to express a multitude of emotions from an early age. But boys, like the Cure song said, don’t cry.

I looked after my best friend’s little boy the other day. At seven o’clock in the morning, I sat bolt upright to the sound of sobbing. In three seconds flat, I was out of my bed and standing in the doorway of his room. An empty bed. I listened again and heard the sound coming from downstairs. Two months shy of his third birthday, he stood at the bottom of the staircase, his tiny face shuddering to the sound of his own tears. Ever felt like your heart was going to crack in two? ‘I want my mummy’, he cried, as I took him back upstairs and popped him under my still warm covers. I crawled in besides this miniature bundle of arms and legs. He fixed me with a Paddington bear stare and curled his arms around my neck. ‘I am safe in you’, he said.

Later, composure regained, we fixed together some wooden train track and I asked him if he had a nice time. ‘Yes’, he whispered. ‘But I cried, didn’t I’. The second stage of heartbreak was complete. What part of this inchoate little being was already concerned with keeping face, with holding onto himself, with not expressing what he really feels? ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘We all feel like crying sometimes’.

This is where it begins. Two-and-three-quarters or eighty-four, it makes no odds. This is the male blueprint. Younger generations have made alterations. They have had to. Women no longer need to marry. We can control our fertility. We can storm the boardroom. In many ways, we have moved further towards each other’s sensibilities. But some things remain encased within our dna. Sam is embarrassed that he cried and Tony is worried he might express too much.

And me? I am hoping that Tony doesn’t cry. But even if he does, my story- seeking antenna will never switch off. This woman is stepping onto unchartered territory. I am going boldly where no woman has gone before, so that you don’t have to. Wish me luck.

I'm the boss of me...

Tomorrow, I start a freelance temp job at a well-known London advertising agency. One wonders how my re-introduction into society will pan out, having spent the past six months working solo, with nowt’ but an arsy black cat and yours truly for company. I am, by turns, petrified and thrilled.

In my mind’s eye, I see a dog. A small, wiry, friendly faced, mutt, skidding uncontrollably from office pillar to post. People! People! People! OMG, I do exist! Staying at home for six months can wreak solipsistic-style havoc with one’s sense of presence. Here’s hoping that I can resist the urge to lick my new co-workers.

How I might respond to command is another matter. Can free-will be relinquished once one has controlled one’s own daily destiny? Dog-like I may be, but I have learnt a lot from that black cat over the past six months. Everyone takes an afternoon nap between three and six, don’t they?

More to the point, will one have enough hours in the day to pursue one’s hearts desire? In short, will this dog live to blog another day? Time, cups of tea and biscuits will tell.

On the upside, story-seeking opportunities abound. What treasure may lurk un-dug amongst the creative and account management departments of one of London’s best-known advertising groups? What ‘tales that are still to be told’ could be nestled somewhere between the water cooler and a ‘tissue meeting’?

Ho hum. It’ll be good to get out of the house and I like an adventure. Especially one that might involve food. I could be getting prematurely excited here, but my friend who works at Mother gets a free breakfast and lunch every single day that she shows up to work. That seems like a deal. Like all good dogs, I respond well to free treats.

So, now to search for the A-Z, find two shoes that match and prepare a Scooby snack……just in case.