The Downton Effect

My married, forty-something friend Emily says that she has had to buy condoms and there was a problem. I'm not sure that I want to hear of this problem over toad-in the-hole, but she continues.  The condoms, she explains, came in packs of five  or packs of twelve. Emily is a thrifty girl. She always buys eggs and loo rolls by the dozen, but this twelve-pack confounded her. The problem was the use-by date: 2013. 'Am I realistically going to get through twelve condoms in two years?' she mused to herself in the middle of Family Planning. Reason prevailed and she saved £3.30 on the five.

I am interested in this because I've read in the papers that couples in their forties have more vigorous relationships than those twenty years younger. Then I notice that our companion, Serena, is silent. Serena is also forty-something and she is also married. I ask her roguishly whether she'd have bought a dirty dozen. She says that her money would be more usefully spent on a set of replacement Hoover bags.

Now I am intrigued. I decide to quiz a couple more middle-aged friends, and, under the pretext of mentioning the church roof appeal, slip in a question about their conjugal routines. One replies that her husband finds his fulfilment in Delia Smith. Another has a husband with needs that are not culinary and that tend to interfere with Saturday Live. And so they've reached a polite compromise. 'Go on, then!' she sighs patiently, 'if you'll make me a cuppa after.'

A third friend mentions Downton Abbey. When the credits roll and the National Grid surges with the boiling of nine million kettles, she and her husband generate their own electricity on flattened sofa cushions. 'After every episode?' I ask incredulously.

Downton Abbey keeps me up twenty minutes after my usual bedtime. When it's over I barely have energy to squeeze the toothpaste. Then I am enlightened. That ravenous couple began their breeding early. They now have teenagers who hibernate for most of the weekend in their bedrooms, while the rest of us are wiping toddler tantrums off the living room walls. I realise that this is, in a way, good news and I resolve to tell Emily that in 2013, when her eight-pack has expired and her kids are grown, she'll be splurging on bumper boxes again.

Comments

  1. Kate25 October 2011 at 09:58

    This would be even funnier if it wasn't so true!

    ReplyDelete
  2. A Little Light Work25 October 2011 at 12:22

    Who's Delia Cook?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous25 October 2011 at 13:02

    Just found you at Newbie Tuesday over on the Britmums site and am so glad I clicked through!
    We are also at the toddler stage so pretty much need to schedule it on the planner these days if there's any chance of it happening! Forever the optimist though, I'd always go for the bumper pack :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Adventures of a Middle-aged Matron25 October 2011 at 13:10

    Whoops! It is, of course, Delia Smith who nestles on his pillow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ellen25 October 2011 at 15:07

    Very funny. I wonder if I could get my husband to watch Downton... he's got a bit of a phobia of costume dramas and now I think I understand.

    As an aside, when does middle-age start?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Adventures of a Middle-aged Matron25 October 2011 at 16:30

    In my case, Ellen, middle age was gratefully embraced around the age of 23. But you can start it whenever you like. All you need is a tartan sofa rug...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Him Up North25 October 2011 at 23:06

    What happens when one of the channels does a Downton Abbey catch-up weekend, with back to back episodes? Sex marathon?

    ReplyDelete
  8. SkatingAmsterdaMummy26 October 2011 at 14:53

    Very very funny post, is it me or does it seem more enthralling because you are the wife of a Vicar?

    ReplyDelete
  9. thisisnotamumblog27 October 2011 at 18:13

    As you are the wife of a vicar, I hesitate to mention the reason I came up with for her not needing birth control...suffice to say I suspect that this lady could well be somewhat understating things!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Grasmerewonder29 October 2011 at 22:06

    Very good! I have a friend who insists her husband watches Downton and not Spooks if he wants to ahem 'park his car in her garage' on a Sunday night...

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lynn C Schreiber1 November 2011 at 10:30

    Ha. Great post.

    I have had a tartan rug for many years. We have an open-topped MG and my husband laughs when I use the tartan rug to keep my knees warm. All I need is a blue rinse and flask of coffee and I can slide right into OAP life.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Mammasaurus6 December 2011 at 14:22

    Now I don't watch Downton Abbey but maybe after reading this I should! Seeing as there's a distinct lack of Nigella to get Papasaurus in the mood these days...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Daily Mail Columnists Should Wear Burkas

Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones has provoked the ire of Twitter with by declaring that mummy bloggers are blinkered dimwits whose lives are spiced by Napisan. I'm afraid I have to sympathise with her, for all of her prejudices echo my own: Writing about my life has pretty much ruined it. Supper last night was an elderly carrot glued to the fridge shelf by a pool of brown mucus and the floor was flooded when I left the bath taps running because Blogger has diverted me from domestic essentials. I've had to shut the children in front of the television when a new post has assailed me and some family members no longer speak to me because Twitter interactions leave me no time to reach the telephone. But there is a big part of me that thinks writing should be hard: you should cringe whenever you press that 'publish' button. Artists – and I'm sorry, I do consider myself an artist – have to wrench the dirtiest, most disgusting part of their inner soul and show it t
Read more

The Various Uses of Rubber

I have ordered a new pair of wellies from Amazon for the daily walk to school. My current hardly-at-all-old pair has developed a fissure along one toe. I only noticed this when I was wading along the stream that flows brownly past bobbing Argos bags en route to the afternoon pick up, and I was not pleased. They are a glamorous pair with pink spots and white swirls, bought to ease my daughter's pain in ackowledging a wellie-wearing, stream-paddling mother in public. I now distrust wellies with spots and swirls, so order a safe-looking green pair. Better to be waterproof than glamorous. Royal Mail gets them as far as my door, thrusts through a 'Sorry you were out' card, and promptly loses them. Amazon is sympathetic and dispatches a replacement pair. This also makes it to my door and again a card is left. This time I decide to pick them up in person from the Royal Mail depot. The man behind the glass screen makes off with my delivery card and probably has a cup of tea and
Read more

A DIY Guide to the Middle-Classes

I wonder sometimes what I am. I have lived the last decade on an inner city council estate, amid Oxford academia, in a remote country town and in London suburbia. In the first we were, with our relentless consonants and sagging bookshelves, regarded as aristocrats. In the second, as the 'squeezed middle'. In the third, as city sophisticates and now, sometimes, isolated in my tweed amid the Ralph Lauren and the hoodies, I feel myself a bumpkin. Class should no longer matter. Nowadays, for most of us, it's more a question of perception than birth. But the perception matters. My daughter battles to adjust speech, habits and dress to blend in with each new environment; the political parties compete to woo the amorphous throng they deem Middle England and Melvyn Bragg has started a television series on class and culture. The British, he decides, no longer define themselves by class, but by the music they listen to, the books they read. I listen to Dolly Parton and Beethoven.
Read more