Women

A self-employed electrician used to be a regular in our local pub - especially early doors. I wouldn't say he was a friend - just an acquaintance. He was about fifty years old. One evening, in the middle of the bar-room banter, the topic of conversation switched to marriage and women.

The electrician piped up with this remark about marriage: "The shagging's all right. It's all the other stuff I don't like ."

Momentarily my jaw dropped. What did he mean by "the other stuff"?  Conversation, sharing household tasks, child-minding, eating meals together, gardening, making decisions about decorating, sharing thoughts, looking to the future, laughing together, holidays. Did none of that daily "stuff'" matter?

For people who are unfamiliar with the term, "shagging" is a slang term for sexual intercourse.

Anyway, about twelve years ago this fellow's visits to the pub ceased very suddenly. I asked around and discovered that he had had an accident at work. He had fallen off a ladder and broken his back.

The last time I saw him was about ten years back. He was in a wheelchair and had been pushed into "The Cherry Tree" by his long-suffering wife. He told me that he was paralysed from the waist down. Of course his wife had become his principal carer. No doubt she bathed him, helped him to the toilet, dressed him and ferried him here and there. I wondered if he remembered his horrible remark about marriage. Did he now appreciate all "the other stuff"?

In an ironic  manner of speaking, it seemed like poetic justice. That fellow has never been back in our local pub since the accident happened.