Category: Men & Women

Things that men and women do, sometimes to each other

Love Story

Good Stuff, Men & Women

In an age when marriage is ignored in favor of “hook-ups”, “partnerships” and “friends-with-benefits”, it’s heartening to see how one couple, at least, started young and over fifty years later, are still making it work:

Devoted couple Harry and Sandra Redknapp admit they love each no less than they did after exchanging vows more than half-a-century ago. 

Redknapp was a promising young footballer with West Ham United when he met apprentice hairdresser Sandra Young on a rowdy dancefloor above Stratford’s legendary Two Puddings pub in 1968.  

Months later they were married, with Sandra supporting her husband as he finished his football career with defunct north American club Seattle Sounders before establishing himself as a much-loved coach and manager.

My Murkin Readers will probably be going “Harry who?”  but the fact of the matter is that Harry is as famous Over There as Bill Parcells, Phil Jackson or Tom Landry ever were Over Here.

I know that to people of his generation, such loyalty, devotion and fidelity might seem nothing special, but here’s the difference:  his and Sandra’s marriage has been a celebrity one, subject to all the scrutiny and limelight that only the awful British press can bring.

Stories of his devotion to Sandra are legion (some of which are contained in the above article), but it should be known that Harry would have been a juicy target for all the fame groupies (step forward, Ulrika Jonsson) for whom his notch on their much-chiseled bedposts would have been a noteworthy one.

But he never strayed, and as he’s got older, that loyalty has made Harry Redknapp all the more beloved to the people of Britain since his retirement from football management.

Well played, mate.

Alt-Disney

Men & Women

Yeah, this kinda makes sense:

Children should get lessons in school on how to build strong relationships to counteract ‘Disneyfied’ portrayals of love

Ask any child their favorite film, and there is quite a high chance they will name a Disney movie, like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ or ‘Aladdin’.

However, experts believe that these films are giving them the wrong idea about what a healthy relationship looks like.

In ‘Aladdin’, the hero whisks Princess Jasmine away from restrictive palace life, while ‘Cinderella’, ‘Snow White’, and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ all involve a young girl being saved by a ‘handsome prince’.

Yeah, in real life, Jasmine’s father’s security police would hunt down the couple, shoot the insolent little pup and take the now-deflowered houri  back to her father’s palace where she’ll be whipped for her adultery and beheaded for bringing shame to the family name.

Let’s not even talk about the “handsome savior prince” scenario.

Me, I think that Disney shouldn’t stop at “happily ever after”, but use their characters for some real-life advice, e.g.

Dealing With Nosy Room-Mates

 

Workplace Sexual Harassment

 

Everyday Grooming Tips

 

Building A Relationship With Your Step-Family

 

Finding That Perfect Sugar Daddy

 

Seeing as we’re living in modern times, and given that it’s Woke Disney:

Inter-Species Relationships

 

Sharing The Great Outdoors

 

Things To Do While Waiting For Your Prince To Come

 

When Your Prince Finally Comes

 

There ya go.  Coming soon [sic]  to a screen near you.

One-Sided

Men & Women

For a change, this post should not be read as a complaint or anything like it.  Here’s what prompted it:

In a candid interview, former culture secretary Nadine Dorries has revealed that she used to go on dates to get free meals because she was paid so little as a trainee nurse. Mrs Dorries left school at 16 and began training as a nurse at 18, but was shocked at the pittance she was paid.
‘It was not eating money,’ she said, revealing how she and friends would accept dates to get a free meal.

…and I’m not at all shocked by the revelation that women use sex (or even the vague promise thereof) to get money or whatever from men.

‘Twas ever thus, and we men have always acknowledged it without any kind of bitterness or rancor.  Women have always had the upper hand in this regard, and it’s just the way of the world.

Indeed, I’m quite jealous of the fact that women can set up an OnlyFans account and, regardless of appearance*, sell online videos of themselves having a little sex fun, whether solo action or with a partner.  (*No matter what they look like or how old they are, there will always be men who have a fantasy about that particular look, and are willing to pay for the privilege of seeing their fantasies brought to life, so to speak.)

Ditto all the InstaGram and TikTok “influencers”, of whom the biggest earners seem to consist mostly of hot younger women.

Is all this “unfair” to men?  Yeah… whatever.  I mean, no woman (and certainly no man) is going to pay a monthly sum to watch me clean a gun or sample different gins (probably the only two activities I’m capable of doing with any competence at this time of my life).  I wish that were not true, but there it is.

Anyway, here’s a pic of Nadine Dorries, taken some time ago:

…shown for educational purposes to my Murkin Readers, who probably have no clue who she is.

Virtual Morality Questions

Deep Thoughts, Men & Women

The era of electronic entertainment has given rise to all sorts of interesting moral questions, questions that bring shades of gray to hitherto black-and-white issues of right or wrong.  Here’s one:

I was going to file this silly thing under INSIGNIFICA when I decided it wasn’t that silly, after all.

We might think that this is a modern morality question, but of course it isn’t.  People have been sending “love letters” to each other pretty much as soon as we discovered writing, only now the communication is electronic over the Internet rather than on paper and by messenger / through the mail.  In days gone by, therefore, a husband discovering racy love letters from another man in his wife’s possession would justifiably, in my opinion, be suspicious of his wife’s fidelity — and certainly so if the other man was a mutual acquaintance, or someone living close by.

Of course, the further the distance between writers, the less likely would actual adultery take place — but, to address the above question, is virtual adultery any different from actual adultery?

Note that I’m not talking about flirty communication here;  there’s an enormous difference, in my opinion, between “I’d love to take a walk on the beach with you someday”  to “I want to suck your penis”, although some might argue that the difference is only in degree.

The arrival of the telephone added sound to the situation — and one has only to see how many “phone sex” lines there are to see the effect of that.  Still, I suppose that one might argue that such activity is purely impersonal — I’m reminded of a scene in some movie of a young woman having phone sex on one of these lines while doing her ironing and watching her baby play on the kitchen floor — and it’s all just fantasy, not adultery.

What has changed, of course, is that communication nowadays can include video, where love letters never did.  Now we are talking about a whole different ball game, aren’t we?  Or are we?

Does adultery have to require actual physical contact to be classified as adultery?

I have to say “yes” to the above — although that said, I understand that virtual adultery has all sorts of “moth and candle” implications, especially if it’s between people who know each other.  As one woman of my acquaintance once put it:  “Virtual sex has replaced foreplay when it comes to fooling around”, and she’s absolutely right — if, that is, the couple are not just strangers getting a cheap thrill out of the thing.

And there, I think, is the crux of it.  It’s not the virtual aspect of it;  it’s who you’re talking to.  Which is more dangerous to a marriage:  talking sex to a complete stranger in a chat room, on a phone sex line or on a video call, or talking sex with a neighbor, a guy from the office or a friend’s husband?

I think we all know the answer to that.

Just Sayin’

Business, Men & Women

Stories like this one provide yet another reason why women shouldn’t be allowed in the workplace:

A ‘cold and calculating’ fraudster stole more than £1.3million from a small family business where she worked. Alison Smith abused her role at a Blaenavon firm in a ‘devastating’ nine-year fraud, Cardiff Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Roger Griffiths said the 42-year-old sowed division and animosity in the family who own Eiran Civil Engineering so she could go undetected as she made hundreds of fraudulent payments – funding a habit for expensive holidays, cars and clothes. Smith worked for the company as a financial manager from June 2012 until January this year when she resigned.

I don’t care about the money this bitch stole;  men have often done precisely the same thing, or worse.  But this horrible woman’s most damning act was sowing “division and animosity in the family”.  Read the whole story to get an idea of the immensity of her evil.

I can honestly say that in my 40+ years in business life, I never saw a man who could compete with any woman in creating an atmosphere of devious backbiting, career assassination and downright unpleasantness in the workplace.  And in most cases it had nothing to do with crap like sexual harassment, either (although I saw that little ploy used quite often).  Women were (and are) just as willing to stab other women in the back, if it benefits them — or sometimes just out of outright spite.

Anecdote is not data, of course;  but ask any ordinary working woman* whether she’d prefer to work with men, or in a female-only workplace.  The response may surprise you.

*this definition would exclude gender careerists and almost all rabid feministicals.