Why Harold and Maude needs to be taught at schools

There are certain opinions my head and heart both know are right; Britney needs to release a country album, octopuses are aliens, all weather forecasts are made up, but then there are others, thoughts that dwell in more liminal spaces, theories that my brain knows can’t be right, but my heart demands to voice.

Older men going out with younger women? Gross, exploitative, creepy. Exactly. Brain and heart agree.

So then older women with younger men?

……….

I mean, come on? Is it really that bad? Really?

Listen, I know. You could do a PowerPoint on why it’s just as immoral and exploitative, with pie charts and spreadsheets. I’d feel terrible and shake my head in shame for even thinking such a thing but….but as soon as you’d left the room, snap! Back into shape like a pair of expensive jeans, my brain says again: Older women, younger men? Is it terrible...or is it so obviously the answer to all society’s problems that it seems too easy to be true?

We live in a world where teenage boys are depressed, lonely and with brains corroded by impossible standards about women they don’t even have the confidence to speak to. We also live in a society where older women are ignored, side-lined and unappreciated just when they are entering the full bloom of their divahood.

There is a solution staring us in the face. A culture healed. A world transformed. And what does it look like? A gang of teenage boys patiently waiting outside the M&S changing rooms for their girlfriends.

In fact, they could probably swap clothes; the Gen Z wardrobe, gender fluid, tracksuit bottoms and bumbag, is already peak Boomer retiree leisurewear. Harry Styles has been stealing Mrs. Slocombe's look for years. The cast of The Steel Magnolias look like a K-Pop fashion mood board.

Let me clarify, when I say younger men, I mean at least one major national exam under their belt. When I say older women, I’m not talking about “cougars” which is such a demeaning term. It suggests desperation, denial of a woman’s age, shame, like in some way the younger man is prey she is desperate to catch. Older men PREY on young women. Older women deign, they stoop, they beckon. There is no other way to describe it than God’s work.

No one is being taken advantage of here. Older women have no power in our society, no institutionalised corrupting influence to weaponize against these poor young colts. In fact, teenage boys are ones with more cultural leverage. Everything is designed for the whims of straight teenage boys: films, politics, women’s bodies. Think of all the rubbish things we’ve been forced over the years to tolerate because teen boys like them: Vin Diesel films, the song Jump Around by House of Pain, Jackass; why shouldn’t older women get that bump too?

Older women, when denied attention, make bad choices. I’m convinced the reason so many female teachers have affairs with their students is not because they’re attracted to their scrawny teenage bodies. What they really find so irresistible that they will risk their career, marriage and a spell in prison for, is a man listening to them, respecting them, making eye contact and writing what they say down. How starved of attention are these women, that they mistake a young man being in love with them, with a young man respecting their thoughts on the formation of ox bow lakes? 

Are these teens being exploited? What’s the worst these confident women in their sixties are going to do to you lads? Drag you to brunch against your will? Pressure you into visiting one too many Farmers’ Markets? Force you to become president of France? If you meet a 16-year-old with well thought out ideas on why white women abandoned Hillary Clinton - well, he’s clearly dating the right menopausal lady. A younger man going out with an older woman is going places.

A woman in her sixties is just entering her empire phase. She is also, most importantly, busy. She wants a man with simple problems that are easy to fix, quick in bed and can send him to the cinema when she wants some free time. You can’t HURT these women boys. Life has hurt them, you really think your pathetic attempts at mind games can equal a life well lived? She will bat your mind games away like King Kong flicking away a plane. She will keep these dawdlers to a schedule.

Imagine you’re seventeen, working in McDonalds and everybody hates you. At the end of your shift your new girlfriend comes in to collect you, and it’s Dame Helen Mirren. She’s in a hurry and demands you drop her to her Zumba class. The next day, are your colleagues worried about your welfare? Are they concerned that you’re in an inappropriate relationship with someone leveraging their age to their advantage? No! They’re thinking, how the hell is he banging DCI Jane Tennison? There’s more to this streak of used chewing gum than meets the eye, let's make him restaurant manager. 

Any romcom would be improved if the rest of the cast stayed the same but now Dame Judi Dench is playing the female lead. The stakes are going to be higher; Seth Rogen hasn’t just lost the girl of his dreams, he’s lost a national treasure. Her gay best friend is Sir Ian McKellen. The scene where he’s running through the airport to see her before she boards her plane, isn’t just to tell her he loves her, she’s also forgotten her diabetes medication. And when she ghosts him, it’ll take him much longer to get over.

I’m sadly still in the middle. I haven’t entered my Golden Girls pomp yet and I don’t fancy younger men. I thought I was being chatted up by a teenage boy once. He wanted my name, phone number and email, but it turned out he was just collecting money for a charity. I do however have a retirement plan. As soon as I get of an age, I’m dumping my boring same generation relationship and upgrading to a twink.

Lads, My teen gay husband has not even been born yet. I can visualise my final years, wearing a kaftan and turban staring at my reflection in a vanity mirror, rubbing on hand cream as I watch my young gay companion angrily pack his satchel. Slurping gin from my tumbler of cut glass, I sob “Please Daniel, don't leave me! I’ll publish your novella, just do up my dress, I just need tonight, why must you break my heart? Haven’t I bought you pretty things?!” he’ll look back at my mascara smeared reflection and wonder who he hates more, me or himself. The dinner will be a disaster, Daniel and I smoking our cigarettes through long holders throwing drinks and barbs at each other, my children looking on aghast, my ex-husband leaving to finish his scotch on the veranda. Daniel will leave before dessert, calling me an old hag on the way out while I scream “you’ll be back when Sam breaks your heart, he always does!” and pass out into my daughters sherry trifle. And I’ll know I definitely made the right choice. Some facts, the head and the heart know are true.

Things that have annoyed me this week: GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART

This week I have rediscovered Goodnight Sweetheart, my absolute favourite sitcom from the 90s about a put upon husband, who discovers a portal in time and uses it to cheat on his wife.

Our hero finds a way to return to 1940 and for six series over 59 episodes, he doesn’t use this gift to end the war earlier, kill Hitler or alert the West about Stalin’s Gulags, he solely uses it to sleep with a cockney barmaid and pass off Beatles songs as his own.

Every episode hinges on his attempts to balance two wives: the shrewish modern wife with short hair and his little cockney sparrow with LONG HAIR who was just happy with an orange.

The WW2 wife we are definitely encouraged to prefer: she is simple, plucky, and just happy with the odd pair of nylons. The modern times wife we are encouraged to hate: she’s a 90s wife who could buy her own fruit and is punished accordingly. We don't root for her, this sour woman. WW2 wife has a baby, modern wife is barren - presumably because she can't stay away from her fax machine.

We’d watch it and say: “Will he get away with it?”, “Yeah!! He did! Phew!!! He survived to commit bigamy for another day!”

And that’s why Boris Johnson is Prime Minister.

This sitcom brainwashed us to root for this goon, because every night we tune into the news, we have been trained to wonder how will he get away with it? There is just something about this cheating womaniser, obsessed with WW2 that feels familiar.

Boris Johnson loves to compare himself to Winston Churchill: one was the father of the nation, the other is just the father to a larger percentage of the nation.

He likes to compare himself to the wartime leaders because racists love World War Two. It was a better time, when you just had to worry about the Blitz, random death from the sky and not terrible modern problems, like an immigrant making you a latte.

So knowing that Mr. Johnson's entire political career is based around the popularity of this Nicholas Lyndhurst vehicle, what can we learn? If Carrie Symonds wants to last she's going to have to get a lot more excited about fruit.