Squeers I think you just elucidated why I hate those Dusk candle shops and Tarot. It's probably more a symptom of my innate hatred of women but I reckon I just cant stand flakes. I used to abort any advance on a girl no matter how beautiful if she ever mentioned Star signs or drank cocktails. Or had an American accent. Personal rules. If she drank beer or played pool without giggling and pretending to be worse than she was, had opinions and could disarm my charm and resist my cheeky grin I was in love.

'War is rape and pillage, whatever the pretext, and women are perennially as guilty as men in their support of the war effort, and in their will-full denial of what really goes on.'

Everyone knows if women had been running things since the year dot there would never have been any war. It's one of the central tenets of feminism.

If you take a woman and a man, neither wielders of political or corporate power, both shite kickers in the general scheme of things, the woman is an innocent and the man, via his gender, holds all sorts of responsibility for the state of the world.

Poirot make that three I hate people. I like some individuals but people in general I cant stand. I used to envy obi wan roaming around the desert on his own, free from the chattering small talking hordes.

'Does it satisfy some innate vanity or is it the best way to keep a mate?'

I think it's a convenient excuse for solitude for most. Beats shopping for candles and throw cushions.

Houellie,

What is it about scatter cushions....they're everywhere? I even gave way myself recently. although I've had ordinary cushions on the couch always, but I saw this graphically understated, over-sized cushion with a print in Latin about some obscure Italian opera - and I put it on lay-by! (which made me feel better because I knew it was such a frivolous purchase)...I mean, I just "had" to have it.

I'm an Aquarius, by the way - but as mitigation, I like a beer : )

It's all because we've got two brain hemispheres…

Have you noticed that just about everything to do with people can be explained dichotomously?

Despite being a communal species, the only way of guaranteeing happiness is when we take delight in the comfort of our own company – doing whatever we wish to that gives us pleasure and whenever we wish it.

Tensions occur both domestically and societally when other people get in the way.

When having a guaranteed route to happiness requires other people – and they cooperate – all is well and good.

When they don't. It isn't.

And when it isn't something has to cushion the blow - be it scattered or thrown.

That's why domestically one partner might require the solitude of the garden shed and the other the distraction of the shopping mall – or vice versa.

"...It's one of the central tenets of feminism." No. I don't think so, since real feminists of both genders are too busy just getting on with life – such as being mothers to their children – and making life as successful an experience as possible.

It is though one of the central tenets of professional feminism.

Right, so Ms Poirot is a misanthrope and wants to wonder the heather; Houellebecq hates everyone especially women and channels Obi Wan. Trevor would be happy just to get away from it all in his garden shed.

What a bunch of misery guts; compulsory reading, Jude the Obscure and then tattoo on your silly foreheads: "Done because we are too menny".

But, Anthony, I'd only go to live in Scotland if I knew Houellie and WmTrevor were safely ensconced over the hill in a neighbouring valley because I'd need the security of knowing intelligent men weren't too far away (and I might need the odd light-bulb changed) I would, of course, take a transcript of your OLO mutterings to remind me why I left in the first place.

signed
Miss Ann Thrope

Cohenite,

Why always such a downer; did you not get enough of the tit as a baby, or may it be an innate paranoia that leads you to distrust and disregard all possibility outside your narrow frame of reference, and which gives you such an unerring ability to determine all issues with complete confidence in the blink of an eye, and on the least consideration of potential evidence to the contrary?

It must be lonely in that concrete cocoon of ultimate certainty.

(Liked your jokes though - but I think the line in the second was 'particular nasty weather'. Heard the one about the two pickled onions, or acute angina? Oldies but goodies.)

On topic: It's a pity the true spirit of the 60's has been so distorted by sexual and personal liberation run rampant in our truly overly-decadent society. "You got to love one another right now" is now a mere figment of its former self, and almost totally unrecognizable in current practice.

There was a time when men could curse one another in the spirit of the moment, on or off the footie field, with impunity - 'sticks and stones' - as a valid alternative to coming to blows over minor disagreements. It seems we are now too precious, or too in touch with our feminine side perhaps, and certainly too influenced by the PC police.

Women in the front lines, in harms way, has finally emasculated true masculinity, and men have become mere vassals, no longer gods of destiny or captains of industry or kings of grass castles and protectors of the weak. The new view of equality has torn the heart out of what it means to be man and woman, and we are now straight or gay, bi, lesbian, or outright confused in our play-acting role reversal ridiculousness. 'Real women' never used to get pissed and have punch-ups, did they!

Men may be 'C's (or not), but this does not have to reduce women's femininity - does it? Vale la difference.