Low life
Out of the mouths
Jeffrey Bernard
If the age of consent was raised from 16 to 50, lunatic asylums would be empty. came to that conclusion ages ago and long before reading Monday's Daily Mail in which some young people agreed to be in- terviewed and express their idiotic opinions on such trivia as life, love, sex, marriage, abortion and divorce. Normally I wouldn't dream of reading the opinions of pipsqueak teenagers but I was killing the longest half hour in the day 10.30– 11 a.m. and some- one had left the Mail on the table in the patisserie I use as a waiting room. Anyway, what about Donna Wheeler, 18, catering assistant, Leicester? She said, 'First time I had sex, I was 16 and I hated it. It wasn't the way I imagined it would be. My mum told me that sex was wonderful if it was with the right person and I thought oh, this is going to be fantastic. Well, it wasn't and I felt disgusted with myself.' Quite so, and I must point out to teenage boys that this bears out an old adage of mine. Whenever you meet a pretty teenage girl always make a beeline for the mother. I've found it to be usually very rewarding. On the touchy subject of abortion the Mail concludes that a third of the girls they spoke to disagree with the idea that abor- tion should be made legally available to all who want it. Looking at the teenagers around me I think it should be made com- pulsory. If ever I make anyone pregnant again — and I suppose I might in Pakistan, Wales on a Bank Holiday, or during the im- pending soda-water strike — I shall be only too well aware of the possible dangers. Just imagine having a baby son — called Darren on his mother's insistence — who'd grow up to read the Sun, get tattooed, ride a motorbike and drink light ale out of cans 7 shall bathe in Perrier.' while watching breakfast television. Alter- natively you might sire a daughter — called Trish by her mother — who'd grow up to work in an advertising agency, wear sunglasses on the top of her head, frequent discos and describe everything as being 'brilliant'. No, the human race has been batting long enough and should declare its innings closed. On the very beautiful subject of mar- riage, Alexandra Duce, 19, classics student, Leeds University, says, 'Marriage is out- dated. I don't see the need to legalise a rela- tionship with a scrap of paper.' What a ter- rible thing to say. I suspect a printer's error here and that Ms Duce is at Leeds United. Marriage is the opium of the mentally unstable. A truly wonderful thing if a trifle addictive. And, as for 'trial' marriages, they interviewed a really crafty one in Marc Chambers-Willis, 16, son of a former nurse, London. He said, `I'd definitely want to live with the girl I wanted to marry first, so that if at the last moment we knew marriage would be wrong for us, we could back out.' What a cheek! My advice to young Marc Chambers-Willis is that if he wants to have the leg over and then back out as he calls it — and he clearly intends just that — then he should never give his right name, it being as memorable as his mother's present occupation. (I must change my occupation on my passport to `former schoolboy'.) We now come to divorce, not a pretty subject, and a 16-year-old schoolboy, Jason White, knows it all. 'I'm never going to get divorced. When I marry, I'm going to make sure the marriage works.' Well, well. What Master White should be pondering is the far more profound problem of how to make his divorce work. Speaking as a man who's been through three of the wretched redun- dancies I can tell you and him that it's not easy. Take my last wife. We get on like a house on fire. Last week she took me out to a splendid dinner, she buys me presents, calls me 'old bean' and even phones the Coach and Horses to see whether I've snuffed it or not. But final and damning proof of the failure of our divorce is that she still laughs at my jokes. I wouldn't swap her for a wife.
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