I’m against Women’s Lib because I think women come unstuck when they do the chasing. They can’t keep the beseeching or the stammer out of their voices when they ring men up. Then there is the expense of giving a whole cocktail party, in order to extend a casual invitation to one man, who probably doesn’t come anyway, or asking a man to dinner and filling the place with so many flowers and candles it looks like a funeral parlour.

Now most young men are far more house proud and domesticated than girls. They live in bachelor flats with all mod cons. They shop at the late-night supermarket, and their washing is done for them by the dragon in the launderette who has a soft spot for men. Their shirts drip dry over the bath They have no difficulty in getting a char.

In the kitchen in the evening they know all about basil and tarragon as they whisk around in their butcher-boy aprons, blinding you with domestic science. They are even marvellous at washing up. Gone are the good old days, when indulgent wives used to say: “Norm’s a wonderfully imaginative cook, but it takes me three days to clear up the pots and pans after him.”

As they listen to the Women’s Lib screeching, men must wonder why they should bother to marry at all, and get terrible complexes about enslaving a suffering female, or turning a graduate into a cabbage. They don’t need wives to darn their socks or the holes in their arguments.



THE COOLING-OFF PERIOD

Nothing is sadder than to feel a man going off, it’s like trying to hold water in cupped hands.

The coward usually does it with a kiss, and then stops ringing up. If he starts saying things like: “I’m awfully fond of you, Jennifer,” or “I love you but I’m not in love with you,” or “We don’t have much in common except the obvious thing, do we?” Or if he’s married: “I think Honor suspects something, so perhaps we’d better cool it for a month or two”—you know the end is very near.


Personal Habits


HYGIENE—ME AND MY FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW

“Well, it’s quicker than a bath any day.”