Let us start off with the premise that man needs woman and vice versa although it is not in this instance a phrase I would choose to dwell on. This need is there in all forms of natural existence. Let us also presume that both sides of this need is based on decency, compromise and respect. At the very least that constraint knocks out 50% of the population if not more. In my own experience and I can only speak of my knowledge of the male species, certainly most men lack those three qualities. So can we presume that some women are also lacking in this department.
So the need I am, talking about only applies to this 50%. A man therefore who recognises this need and is looking out for a prospective partner in living is limited to 25% of the world’s population. Bearing in mind also that geographical constraints and availability also comes into play this 25% of the female supply dwindles down to let us say 0.001%. You can then understand the enormity of the task of finding a suitable partner. Many have tried, so many have failed and so many put up with their partner of choice in a diminished role. For this need to discover, to work, is you would think a miracle.
Four years ago my wife, Helen, died at a relatively young age of 67 after nearly 44 years of a happy marriage. We had both worked hard and to an extent to the detriment of our happiness, supplied 6 children to the the world’s call. We both did our best to the limits of our abilities. The burdens of conjunction were shared equally, Helen probably and reasonably thought at times she was carrying more of the burden than I was but in negotiation it became clear that we both did our best. Decency, compromise and respect were evident on both sides.
To say I was left in the lurch by Helen’s demise is being generous. I was devastated. As I have explained in a previous posting for at least a year afterwards I was living in a catatonic state, unable to function. I needed a woman and I started looking and to my dismay all I could find for one reason or another was the unsuitable.
Then out of the blue after about 17 months of misery and defying everything I have said about geographical constraints I bumped into this woman at a regional railway station. We walked, we talked and we ate a piece of fish together and talked some more and I realised she had the same philosophy and ideas as I did. She seemed to tick every frigging box I could think of. Attraction was immediate and we learnt of our mutual decency, ability to compromise and respect for each other in the following few weeks. She was a lot younger than me but this gap did not bother her because the three rules applied.
We quickly settled into a very intimate relationship which calmed naturally after a while into a more loving, caring and compatible one. We spent weekends together at first. She was young and wanted still to work, to feed her understandable requirement for independence. I was an old bugger living the peaceful, retired, ruraL life, she a stripling wanting the vibrancy of urban living. There was obviously this need for compromise to be finally settled. It came slowly as she put it because she thought that I lived in a one horse town where the horse had died some time before. Dawning arrived and slowly she started moving her stuff into my stuff until now her paraphernalia outnumbers mine albeit with my full agreement.
This slow but deliberate transition took the best part of Covid inspired hell and the situation we found ourselves in did not impair our mutual love and respect. She started to spend more time in my abode rather than hers. Her employment allowed her to travel freely during the accursed government lockdowns, both of us realising them to be shams necessary for the stupid government to try and subjugate the people.
Gradually she took over the Feng Shui of the house with my total admiration and although she could only appreciate the little changes at weekends and holidays, I could truly bask in them all the while. When thinking of her during her many absences I appreciated all the many and wonderful little things she did to turn Helen’s manicured homestead into one with her stamp on it and in the most diplomatic way possible. Whilst at the same time I was also realising the miracle that geographical constraint had played no part in our union. She was from Port Elizabeth in South Africa, 14250 kilometres away, she could not have travelled further or better. I realise this Covid nonsense is being controlled by a hand far greater than our governments capabilities, I also realise that God’s hand must have had a lot to play in our arrangement. We have defied logic we have risen above understanding.
And now as we gently and quietly slide into 2021 and all its Covid inspired horrors, good news has come to us. Ma Femme, as I choose to call her in all Its French inspired wisdom, has found a new location. She can work from home, our home, and we can live together, 24/7/52 into my old age and her approaching maturity until the sun sets. This new Valhalla starts on February 19th, my 75th birthday. All hail love in old age. Let me tell you it is more inspiring and exceptional than young love or any other kind of love. In the words of my old mother in law, Peg Towey, God rest her soul. I am replete.