Rhapsody in G

My recent return to the UK after a visit to Paris has brought with it a raft of fresh anxieties which, I can only hope, my readers will not mind me sharing. One of the young ladies I was fortunate to meet (as part of my research for an article on the much-vaunted new Eurostar service from St Pancras International) was, shall we say, quite amorous in her approach to me over cocktails. I can’t pretend I wasn’t flattered. After so many decades trapped in a loveless marriage, and now free to sample whatever delights the world can offer, it’s a tempting prospect indeed when a woman of 52 throws herself at you in a mist of perfume and silk lingerie.

It was during a post-prandial examination of our respective hotel rooms (strictly to compare notes—she being a fellow journalist covering the same St Pancras launch for a magazine for ladies of a certain age) that she made her move.

Out of due discretion, and the desire to spare you the gory details, suffice it to say that my performance was not considered entirely up to scratch. Too many years of the same, routine love-making meant that the lady in question had cause to err… question my abilities in the bedroom department.

Implausible as it may sound, I discovered that I have reached my seventh decade in life without having the foggiest notion about what or where a G spot is. For the young lady this seemed to be a matter of some concern. I lost track of how many hours we spent looking for this elusive bodily part, and I was reminded of the wise words of old Freddy Marple, a fellow-hack and former drinking partner from my days at both the Stockport Echo and the Birkenhead Beagle. Freddy it was who, after chancing upon a discarded copy of Cosmopolitan magazine on the 409 bus out of Manchester, subsequently made it his life’s work to discover, and document, his wife’s own G spot.

Each week, he’d fill in the boys in the newsroom with the latest developments, eternally hopeful that, with one further search, it would turn up. Alas, despite many years of expeditions, Freddy never did discover that spot. Before he died, he passed the torch on to a young colleague of his who, alas, had a similarly striking lack of success.

I was forced to conclude, at that point, that the G spot might be little more than an urban myth, one step down from the story about the old lady who accidentally killed her pussy in an attempt to dry it in the microwave after a it was caught in a shower. For her part, my former wife was never one to bother too much about spots of any kind, so the subject was, for many years, put to bed.

Nevertheless, the whole, sorry subject of my trystess’ dissatisfaction was a great blow to my self-esteem. On my return home, I quizzed young Jasper on the subject of G spots.

“Pa!” he said, with a guffaw that wouldn’t have disgraced his Uncle Jesmond. “Surely you haven’t fallen for that old line?”

I pretended to be unsure what he meant. “The modern woman came up with the notion of the G spot so she could persuade her partner to spend lots of time looking for it. It’s just a cover for what you might have known in your day as foreplay. It's the oldest trick in the book!”

I can't pretend I wasn't taken aback by this news. Jasper went so far as to blame ‘my generation’ for the whole business. “If your lot had spent more time on foreplay in the first place, there’d have been none of this G spot nonsense for me and my pals to have to contend with."

I did rather feel I was getting it from both sides. The sins of the fathers, and all that. Nevertheless, if I ever see that little hussy from the Eurostar junket again, I'll have a thing or two to say to her, I must say.