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Ladies, it appears we fall into two simple categories. No, not Tits Or Tushes, it's a different taxonomy.
The very use of the word taxonomy gives a clue about which group I might fall in to: Women Who Think Too Much. As opposed to the other group: Women Who Don't Think Enough. Men also fall into two parallel categories, based around the type of woman they would prefer.
I bought my sister a self-help book once, actually, called Women Who Think Too Much. Perhaps some of us do have a tendency to over-analyse sometimes, but the only self-help book I've ever bought for myself was entitled Shut Up And Move On, which gives you a flavour of my general approach to life.
However, if you are a woman who is seldom troubled by thoughts of any kind, there is a new product on the market designed just for you. It's an eTablet for laydees, with a pretty pink background and pre-loaded with all the software you need (love that word, soft-ware, sounds like kittens and snowflakes and clothing all put together, mmmmm). Apps cover yoga, shopping lists, recipes, perfumes and weight charts, plus of course the indispensable technology to help you track the timing of your monthly visitor. How did we manage these things before? I have no idea, I can't remember (duh - women are like goldfish).
This eTablet is for women who are "confused by technology", and therefore also good for women who have been lobotomised. Personally speaking, I am continually confused by the bewildering array of rectangular things in my handbag. Are they all bars of chocolate? Is it a tiny teeny TV? I hear ringing and I hold the white rectangular thing up to my ear - oops, it's a pantyliner again. God, I'm always doing that.
Like many conversations with women, there is a serious point somewhere within all this chatter. The pinkification of products, the dumbing-down of technology for a female audience, is really worrying. It's an insidious, pernicious new variant of gender-discrimination and it's creeping in under the wire in the disguise of responding to consumers. Not just small gadgets either. If you want a really good laugh, have a look at Honda's new girl-car. Simply perfect. Comes in any colour you want, as long as it's pink.
If you grow up in South Yorkshire, you're aware that under your feet is the ground, and under the ground are the men. The dads of all your friends, hewing away at the coal while you're stock still staring out the classroom window. It's the same in London I suppose, that earthquake rumble of tube train that you feel in your soles and hear in the clink of glasses on the draining board.
But even when you think you know about the underground world, there are still surprises to be had. The Williamson tunnels under Liverpool that are only just being re-discovered or, even more fascinating, the maze of tunnels under the Balby flats in Doncaster. There was once a whole House cut into the sandstone here, with a ballroom that could hold 200 people and mysterious carved figures at every turn. When they were building the dual carriageway, they tried to bring up some of the carvings, the animals and the people, but in they end they just filled in the space. So the elephant and mahout stand under the road, their unseeing eyes stopped with grout, still present but not to be seen again. Just - there - enormous, permanent, invisible.
People are like this. Smooth-surfaced but with huge, eleborate things inside them that no one else will ever know, unless they tell the story. It's the sharing of the elephants and ballrooms, the secret passageways of the inner landscape, the tales we tell of ourselves that enable us to see that surface with a different eye. Listen carefully to learn the map of beneath, the opening of the clamshell, the beautiful unique network of memories and thoughts, of hopes and disappointments, of secrets and confessions as whorled and complex as a fingerprint.
Simple people, plain and straightforward on the inside, smooth as saucepans - they hold no fascination for me. Yes I can endlessly trace my fingertips across the curl of your lip, the breadth of your shoulders, the line of hair pointing down from your navel. But it's the richness of you beneath the skin that catches my breath and holds my attention.
What if you had a slow realisation that perhaps your main charm had been after all not your smile, your wit or even your cleavage - but perhaps nothing more enticing than your convenience?
Then it follows that as you become less convenient, you become less appealing. And that finally, inevitably, your appealing becomes inconvenient.
Surely a man that you have held close to your heart, or indeed other parts of you, could not be so heartless, so shallow? And if it be so, surely that reflects more on your ability to assess character than on his ability to ensure you can be in the right place at the right time to suit his schedule.
Can you bank on the fact that there is an inverse relationship between interesting girls and their easy availability? Well that may be true. But if availability rather than interesting-ness becomes the determining factor, you're stuffed.
Or rather, not stuffed. Because it's not convenient.
