ROBIN HOOD: SURPRISE ENDING FOR MARIAN

Well, having insanely predicted that the BBC Robin Hood TV series would conclude in the same way as the traditional Robin Hood story, with Robin and Marian marrying, I have to admit that the BBC outfoxed me.

Yes, Robin and Marian did wed at the end, but it was as Marian lay dying with a sword sticking out of her gut. An interesting twist on the old tale, especially as this is essentially a children's TV program.

And as Sir Guy was the one who shoved the sword in her, I suppose we should now officially think of him as irredeemable. It wasn't a smart move of Marian to cruelly taunt a man on his way to behead a King, pumped with adrenalin from fighting, but even so, stabbing the poor girl was a bit much.

But it's OK! Because Robin Hood will avenge his love and hunt down Sir Guy like a terrier after a rat.

Except that, oh, hold on. Doesn't look like that's going to happen, considering that after his wife died, Robin's only thought was to get together with his 'men' and ponce off back to England.

Ah well! At least the King Richard wasn't killed. And as Richard the Lionheart he is a real historical character who in real life wasn't killed by an arrow from the Sheriff of Nottingham while running around a sandpit, then that's just as well I suppose.

CHRISTMAS CARD CRISIS

Writing Christmas cards has become much less of a trauma since I started working within an office team of five. When I worked for a company of hundreds it was the cause of much angst. I would write cards for the core group of my co-workers, who would mostly reciprocate with nothing, only to receive floods of cards from people from the sub-groups below:

A) co-worker whose existence I had barely registered
B) co-worker who had been the butt of my jokes
C) co-worker who had been stuff of my nightmares

To send a 'reply' Christmas card to sub-group workers always presented an irritating dilemma. Was it hypocritical/cowardly to send a reply Christmas card to someone I didn't think much of, or was it extending the hand of friendship during the Season of Goodwill. And could I be arsed to write more cards anyway.

Now I have less people to write cards to, but the dilemma of what to write remains. When I was at school I would take the trouble to write something personal and very lovely on every single card. Sometimes, some friends would do the same for my cards. But as the years went by, I noticed that it was not in vogue to write personal messages. Fashion seemed to dictate that Christmas card messages be as bland and unoriginal as possible. The love and care I lavished on my messages felt shunned and ridiculed.

And so, I too now use standard lines, dimly wishing people a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, simply out of fear of people realising that I cared enough for them to write something personal.

But, yet still, another Christmas card hurdle stands before me. What type of card to send. Cards are cheap now, even very good cards, it is almost impossible not to send a card that is either beautiful to look at or actually quite funny. The people I know however must be the clientele of a shop that sells especially poor Christmas apparatus, because I am still in receipt of a sizable amount of cards that are boring and one step away from the flimsiness of paper.

What should I think of someone who gives me a rubbish Christmas card? Should I be the better person and refuse to assume that the quality of card equates with the quality of their feeling for me? Or should I take revenge and plot their death in the new year?

And what of the person who gave me a card just one size up from a stamp? What is the message behind that? Is it, I begrudge you a card at all, so here's a token gesture. Or is it, I don't take this whole Christmas thing seriously, and so here's a token gesture. Or perhaps it is, I believe that when I give a Christmas card a part of my soul goes with it, and so here's a very small card.

This year, I have tried to be cool about cards and have given out more standard designs with standard messages than in previous years. I find however that the relief of having made less effort does not outrun the feeling that I've not done my best by people. It is the slippery slope, I fear. Eventually, I might turn into one of those hideous people who pretends that they don't send Christmas cards out of concern for the environment.

Next year therefore, I pledge it will be glitter and glue and a go go. I might try and get out of Christmas drinks with people, but by God they will not escape the full-on Christmas card experience.

A VERY BAD DAY AT THE OFFICE

BAD DAY AT THE OFFICE

A SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT TOO FAR

For years now, I have been politely keeping my Christmas diary as light of social events as I can manage. This really shouldn't be difficult because I don't know that many people. Every year though, every year goddammit, I find myself doing stuff that I don't really want to do.

I suspect I'm not alone.

I suspect that you, dear reader, have had to go to some Christmas social event that you just wanted to get out of the way. You don't look forward to it, you don't necessarily dread it, but you just don't particularly want to do it. You go with a weighty heart, make the most of it, half enjoy it, and feel relieved when it is over.

It's not about being anti-social. And it's not that I don't like people. What I don't like is the cold and the dark, and at this time of year Britain has both in abundance.

I drive to work in the cold and the dark, I drive home in the cold and the dark, and then, instead of spending my short evening at home with a tipple of ginger wine and box of chocolates, in the central heated warmth of my comfy home, cuddling next to my husband, lounging on my soft sofa, watching Sledge Hammer on DVD, writing a blog post, or playing Resident Evil 3, I am expected to put on half-flattering clothing, cover it with two tons of outer clothing, go back out into the cold and dark, scrape the ice of my car (yet again) and drive into a packed town centre, to pay half a years wages on carparking whilst I sip tomato juice talking to someone whose replies I can't hear.

I can't see the point. It was alright when I was young and single, because the chance of a snog always energised any evening out. But now, what's the point?

And what really gets me is that I bet that most people are like this. I bet that most people are trying to get out of things, and only turning up to things out of guilt, or good manners, or a sense of not wanting to be left out. Pubs and restaurants at this time of year, full of groups of people, grinning and bearing it, worried about presents not yet bought, and credit card limits, and the film they are missing on ITV, and wondering how soon they can get away.

It's those bloody, annoying extrovert types who think that everyone is in as much in need of a social life as they are, who organise things, and get every out, and then moan about the fact that only half the people turn up.

Would that they would realise that the reason they are always organising everything is because no one else ever actually wants to do anything. People don't turn up because they never wanted to be somewhere in the first place.

Then there's the illnesses at this time of year. Colds and flu and stomach bugs rush round work places and families knocking people down like dominoes. People say they will go to something, then they get ill. Or they feel like they might be getting ill. Or they are just getting over being ill. This puts even more pressure on the healthy ones, the ones left standing, to drag their tired bodies out into the extreme cold, and to mingle in public areas with lots of germs in order that they too can get ill.

And for god's sake! It's the busiest time of year already! What with buying feeble and/or inappropriate presents for loved ones (and relatives), decorating the house in tat, and writing half-hearted messages on cheap, flimsy Christmas cards for people I have trouble remembering the names of, I don't want to have to treble my social output too.

No more, dear reader, no more. Close friends and one work do it is. Then come the New Year, no more social events until March proves itself to be of decent weather.

I am old now. Let me slumber by the fire like the grumpy fat old dog that I am. I am your friend for life, just not for Christmas.

MILLS & BOON KNOW SEX

Do you know, I don't think that we have nearly enough sex on this blog, and so the article in today's Guardian about Mills & Boon is a good excuse to get it on.

This may surprise you dear reader, having come to know me as the no-nonsense woman that you have, but in my time I have read two Mills & Boon books. It was not a predetermined act on either occasion, but both times I read the book to the end and found it enjoyable.

Had I not read them, then I might have found some merit in Julie Bindel's argument that these books promote an unhealthy idea to women of how a relationship should be and that the books are "a misogynistic hate speech".

As it is, I think Ms Bindel is bonkers.

The thing about these books is that they are fantasy. People, even women, are allowed to fantasise, and the thing about fantasies is that they are not necessarily something that you would want to happen in real life. They are an exaggeration of a desire. And desires, unfortunately for the like of Ms Bindel, do not necessarily adhere to the guidelines of 21st century pseudo-intellectual thinking.

Take men for instance. As I understand it, a great deal of men like to have a sneaky-peak at porn. Heterosexual men like to look at naked women in all sorts of positions doing all sorts of filthy things. Does this mean that in real life all men walk into Sainsbury's expecting the woman on the cheese-counter to get her breasts out or the cashier to drop her knickers? No. This is because sane men know the difference between fantasy and real life. They have dirty pictures to fiddle with themselves over, but do not expect every woman they meet in real life to act the same sort of way as the women in the photos.

And I would suggest that sane women also know the difference between fantasy and real life. It's just that instead of looking at mucky pictures, women (and a great deal of them evidently, judging by how well Mills & Boon do) like to read stories about 'mildly brutish' men seducing 'firecracker' type women or some such.

Ms Bindel seems blind to the fact that it is the curse of the heterosexual woman to fancy men. Men tend to have masculine traits. And masculine traits can be slightly brutish and a bit repulsive. Therefore, what repulses can also attracts us.

Take the current BBC series of Robin Hood for instance. In every other production Maid Marian generally falls in love with saintly Robin Hood and is repulsed by the nasty Sheriff. In the BBC series, Maid Marian generally falls in love with weakling Robin Hood but is obviously hugely attracted to one of the Sheriff's brutish men, Guy of Gisborne, even though he often repulses her.

Which is at it should be. You can bleat all you like about this being a sign of Marian's low self-esteem/cultural conditioning/oppression of a patriarchal society, but it obviously has more to do with the fact that Marian senses that sex with Guy would be fantastic.

I dread the day when the series ends and Marian marries Robin, as she must do by tradition, and is thereafter doomed to a life of mediocre shags with a slightly weedy chap in green.

It's a brave and welcome move by the TV programme makers to acknowledge this dynamic, instead of just pretending that the leading lady wouldn't think for one second about how sex with the bad guy would be. Like in the Kevin Costner film about Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, for instance. Marian is supposed to fancy a vague Kevin Costner against a thundering Alan Rickman. Not. A. Chance.

Mills & Boon get this. The women who read Mills & Boon get this. It's not oppression or cultural conditioning, it's natural female sexuality.

And escapism. Women who in real life sit very firmly in the driving seat might just want to spend some of their precious spare time dreaming about handing over the car keys and being driven for a while. They might want to fantasise about a man taking charge and seducing them. They are unlikely to want to fantasise about a wishy-washy, indecisive, cardigan-wearing type asking them if they would like a nice cup of tea.

And let me just make it clear here what I am not saying. What I am not saying is that thuggish, cock-comparing, cruel or violent male behaviour makes women go weak at the knees and is to be condoned and encouraged. Women who are turned on by that sort of extreme masculinity in real life are as in much need of help as that type of masculine man.

But in fantasy, masculinity can pose no real threat, and any properly grown-up female will not find masculinity a threat anyway. She will have learnt that a man is as vulnerable to a woman's femininity as she is to his masculinity. Both genders can be weak in the face of the others strengths, which is what can make things so very exciting - in real life and in fiction. In particular, masculinity that seeks redemption through femininity - as with Guy of Gisborn and Marian - is a fascinating and sexy dynamic. It's about an opposing yet equal force.

So, to say that all the Mills & Boon books are about rape is to to completely misunderstand heterosexuality and worse than that, it is to belittle what rape actually is. To say that women are esentially misguided for sexually desiring men, and are being culturally manipulated into it against their will, is patronising and extreme. And extremely patronising.

I think it is immature and/or deluded not to accept that a man's masculinity has the power to turn a woman on. It is amiss not to see that women might want to imagine themselves as the 'firecracker' type being crushed in a man's muscly arms. It is oppressive to deny women the right to sexual fantasies just because they do not conform to some fundamentalist-feminist code gone askew. And it is wrong to suggest that Mills & Boon books are essentially misogynistic.

And just to drive my point home, here's a picture of Daniel Craig looking mannish. Phwoar!