Women will be flocking to see Fifty Shades – but I’d rather polish the silver

Valentine’s Day is coming up and the Fifty Shades of Grey film is coming out, which makes February feel a bit frenzied to me, as if the whole country is at it like weasels, but it is not. In fact, I hear that in the UK, France and the US, the frequency of sex is decreasing. What a surprise! It’s apparently down from five to three times a month.

What a relief for those who find the whole business rather arduous. It is such a chore forever keeping up with the Joneses, but as usual, you get rid of one obligation and another pops up. More women are apparently staring at pornography, and it’s mainly women who will be flocking to see Fifty Shades. I hope this doesn’t mean we all have to pretend to be going with the flow, because I find it frightfully embarrassing. Mr Darcy emerging from the lake is about my limit. The last thing I want to gaze at is other people’s genitalia. It seems rather an odd thing to do.

Even Mavis avoids watching that stuff, although she is terrifically broad-minded and starred in a soft-porn video in her youth, sitting on a swing, rather skimpily dressed, being sprayed with mayonnaise from both sides, and other things too rude to mention. But if if she ever finds herself stuck in front of it in a cinema, with all those odd noises and faces and squirming about, it rather puts her off the whole business. Perhaps that explains the sex decrease. More looking = less doing.

It is of course marvellous that women can now play football, watch porn, masturbate in a carefree way and be bishops, but none of that really appeals to me. It almost makes me want to rush for my pinny and start polishing the silver.

“You can’t legislate for fantasy,” says Fielding bossily, fondly remembering Woman in the Dunes. But that was Art, so that’s all right. Says he. I’ll have to take his word for it. I dare not look and check.