Raineth on the just

Now, I'm not much of a party animal, but this week seems to have been one long round of eating and drinking. I blame the Bank Holiday - that started it of course - but since then I just keep getting dragged into restaurants for something to eat. Or worse – sucked into the vortex that is Broadway! I've had a piece of chicken in my fridge, waiting to be cooked for so long now that I think it's about to get up and leave of its own accord. I doubt if I shall have time to cook it today either, because I'm going sailing this evening and that's always a bit of a rush. I'm hoping this wind keeps up though, because sailing without wind can be tedious to say the least. It was blowing old boots last night but seems to be dropping now.

I used to have a theory that Thursday evenings are when the celestial wind machine gets turned off for its weekly service (we always sail on Thursdays). It can be blowing hard enough to shred the sails of the 'Flying Dutchman' all day but then by the evening, about five minutes before the race is due to start, the great turbine slows, the flags flag, and the water turns into a glassy black mirror. Sometimes, if the paint on the boat were wet, we could watch it dry and have more fun that way. At the moment though, the sign above the door of the building next door to the crack house across the road from here is swinging in the wind. Let's hope it stays that way, at least until we have finished our race.

Now, I'm not much of a sexist but many years ago I discovered that there's a real difference between men and women. Can you guess what it is? Well, if asked to state a preference, a woman will usually say that offered the choice between rain and wind, she'd choose rain. A man, on the other hand, would more often than not choose wind in preference to rain. And do you know why that is? Well, it's all to do with hair. Most women hate to get their hair messed up and therefore fear the wind because wind usually messes up hair something rotten. However, if it's raining, then a woman will usually use an umbrella to protect her well-prepared coiffeur from being annihilated. Men of course, don't often care so much about having the windswept look to the bonce but, like cats, hate getting wet. Similarly, many men think it's far too pouffy to carry an umbrella and so, if it rains, wet is what they get.

Now, I'm not the world's most masculine guy (to quote the Kinks), but I'll tell what I prefer: Wind wins every time for me. Hands down, mate. I'm a real man, me.