No sex with anyone under 18, as if they ever do that.
It's just a story.
Thought for the Day.
Thought For the Day has been a short, under three minutes, slot on the BBC's Radio 4 morning programme for longer than I can remember, I suppose you could call it a religious programme, but it can be a lot of things, it's given by many different religious people, it's given by non-religious people, it's just one persons view on something that has some meaning to them and others, it's odd but yet very... Thoughtful, I haven't listened to it for years, but I sit here thinking, thinking that maybe I should have my turn at giving it, I have views of so many things that others would agree with me on, and I suspect that others wouldn't.
I'm not going into all the things that happened before, not how we met, not how we courted, it's enough to tell you that we met, dated, went to bed together, not to sleep those first few times.
We went out, stayed in, had friends over and went to theirs, we did everything together.
The only thing that we didn't do was get married, I asked, I asked regularly, it had become a running joke between everyone who knew us well, that I asked twice a year, they didn't know that I asked every week, but that was between Linda and I.
I always received the same answer, the same response.
"I will, but not just yet, ask me again later," And then she would kiss me like it was the best thing in the world, which it was to me.
I never got a sensible reason why she wouldn't just say yes, we were doing everything as if we were married, I tried the 'You don't have to change your name' as a joke, but she was known as Mrs Smith in a lot of places already, so that wasn't it, I gave up trying to understand her reasoning.
We had reasonable jobs, we rented a flat in a nice area and were saving for the deposit for a house, we didn't go on holidays, we stayed home and did days out, saved a lot of money by doing that, we only had the one car, a fifth hand low mileage estate car.
Things were going on fine with the savings, things between us were nothing unusual, some of our friends were more at loggerheads with each other than we were, we never went to bed on an argument, we talked about it and sorted it out, and on a lot of occasions we ended up screwing each other's brains out before going to sleep.
Life was great.
Three years bleed into four which was then five before I knew it, our savings were just getting to the point of being the deposit for our first house, we were starting to look in the windows of estate agents in town whilst shopping, we went in and put our name down as first time buyers.
That brought large amounts of post, I don't know if things have changed, but as first time buyers with a limited amount of money, we had to tell the agents this, why do they send you reams of paper that were of five bedroom houses, that were at least twice the amount that you could afford, maybe they were going on the premise that they knew I was going to win the lottery or come into a lot of cash from somewhere, whatever it was, I didn't win the lottery, I didn't do it, and as far as I knew nobody was going to give or leave me lots of money, and I wasn't going to rob a bank.
Then things changed, we needed to get this house thing sorted.
Linda was pregnant.
I laugh when people ask how it happened, come on people, Linda and I were banging each other as often as we could, most nights, and at weekends during the day.
Linda was on the pill, for some reason it failed, it happens we were told.
It didn't slow down the lovemaking, it increased our need for each other more if anything, but the house hunting wasn't going so well, we missed several, we didn't have the money to up our bid, some, when we went inside and looked at them, some were more work than we could cope with, some were just not right, not in the right location, whatever it was we were still in the flat as her seventh month passed.
Then we had a stroke of luck, a friend of a friend of a friend was selling just the house we wanted, we went and looked at it, we put an offer in, it was accepted, then the paperwork began, solicitors were engaged and the process started.
In England the process is long and can be filled with heartache and pain, nothing goes quickly, the solicitors seem to only look at your paperwork once a week, it drags on and on and on.
Linda was the bright pregnant woman with a big belly, her boobs were getting bigger and bigger, but I wasn't complaining, Linda did, but I made the most of them, I'm a man, and breasts are important for most of us, in ways that women can't understand, and we, men can't explain either.
It was summer, a hot one for a change, Linda was finding it hard, we, the block of flats we lived in were having a get together outside on the grass area, someone had a BBQ set up, we took our stuff and joined in, most were there, most were friends, it was all going great.
Linda was the centre of the women, all baby talk, I was with the men, talking crap that only got crappier as the drinks went down.
I noticed this as I wasn't drinking much, I was on call for work, not that I had ever been called out in the years that I was being paid for it.
I was the Key holder in case of a break in, who in their right mind breaks into the local dump, it's the one that handles all the household crap, there's no metal, no electronics, it's just crap, tons and tons of crap, it was a good deal as far as I was concerned, paid to do nothing, my job in the office during the week was bad enough, but being paid for holding a key chain... who was going to say no thanks.
I'd held onto Linda's hand as she got up, just popping back to use the loo she said, I watched as she slowly made her way back to our flat.
Someone offered me a few nibbles, but as I turned back to my seat nibbles in hand, I just happened to see Billy, Billy from over the road stepping into my front door.
Now Billy isn't a best friend, he's a friend from over the road if you get my drift, he must be two, three years younger than me, he was mainly single, which means that he has people, all women, stay with him, at a guess they seem to last about... four to six months on average, some of those women have been beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, some of them were definitely not beautiful in any way that I could see, but I wasn't privileged to see them in bed was I, from what Billy bragged about, every one of them was ready to fuck and suck every night and whenever he wanted them to, I'll take a lot of that with a pinch of salt, but he can't be that bad in the sack if he's never short of a woman in bed for more than a week.