had a quite mind-numbing conversation in the car on the way home from lunch with my family. my mother decided to make her displeasure with my blog known to me :

"why do you always have to blog about sex?"

this came as rather of a surprise to me, as the closest i remember to blogging about sex was my entry entitled 'sex'. and that contained absolutely no references to sex whatsoever. which, as you might recall, was a source of great disappointment to a certain one of my colleagues, a man of the cloth (see post entitled, and i suppose i'm doing myself no favours here should my mother read this, 'sex dolls'.)

"i do not blog about sex."

i defended myself, stoutly. not that i see anything wrong with blogging about sex, indeed, i shall probably make a concerted effort to blog more about sex since i've found out that it annoys my mother. but i'm a very principled person, a champion of the downtrodden, (amongst my numerous and varied talents), and find it necessary to stand up for the victim of unjust and unsubstantiated accusations. in this case, myself.

"yes you do," chimed in my sister, "you had that article on mexicans, and the one on masturbation."

my eloquent rebuttal froze in my throat before it was even born, as i tried to first figure out how an entry about latin-american advertisements promoting gender equality could possibly be construed as pornographic. more so when the original article was taken from the bbc. a news source to which the application of the word 'sterile' would not go amiss. and surely the act of masturbation in showers, obviously by very lonely individuals, by definition precludes sex between two people? (perhaps this last argument is not necessarily accurate, but i shall leave that thought for now.)

"yes, yes! don't forget that one about the policeman!"

my mum whispered excitedly to my sis, overjoyed that she had found another mouthpiece.

"how on earth is a guy chopping off his penis and throwing it at a bunch of cops even remotely sexual?"

i asked. a fair question, if i say so myself.

"because it involves something which is used to distinguish between sexes."

explained either my mum or my sis (by this time their offerings had merged into a mass of indistinguishable gibberish, in my mind), confidently.

"so's a beard."

i pointed out, logically. an affinity with logic being yet another one of my numerous and varied talents.

"not true, not true, there are bearded women in circus acts!"

expelled my mum, tripping over her words in triumphant excitement. an observation which is as worrying as it is true.

"so you're saying i shouldn't blog about anything that is unique to either males or females?"

i enquired. by this time i was getting rather exasperated, but i finally gave up when my wife, who had been following the conversation rather sullenly (a result of not having been able to find anything to buy in zara), decided to chip in to answer my query. with a promulgation that left us all mired in silence for the rest of the (mercifully short) journey :

"yes! like jeans!"