My friend Hermione, the youngest of the school friendship group, turned 30 last weekend. I recognised a reluctance when she blew out all 30 candles on Colin the Caterpillar’s cake.
When I turned 30, it felt like The Joker had strapped a time-bomb onto my womb with a complex maths problem:
Let’s see here….I will need…
18 months to get to know a bloke
+ 3 months of hard selling the idea of me, forever
+ 1 year to prepare a wedding good enough for the Gram
+ 2 weeks honeymoon in Italy
= kid before the eggs run out.
This equation is the death of romance. That spontaneous fling with a brown-eyed geezer who doesn’t know what a turnip is, is no longer ‘sweet’ but a critical time waster.
And so the Friday night dates get turned into a (secret) game show:
“CAN YOU BREED WITH ME?“
Question 1 – How did you spend your lock down?
MAN 1 – “Oh, Sue was struggling with her food shop down the road, so I invented an app that made it easier for her and other elderly people to shop. Then, my dog, Wilson and I ran around Richmond Park every day. And I taught myself the Saxophone in the evening – would you like to hear Baker Street? ……The app? Oh, I sold it to Apple.” – 1 point.
MAN 2 – (laughs) “I think I just played Xbox the whole time and got sloshed.” – 0 points
Now as you can see from the example above, Man 1 will win. His prize: an all-strings attached, life absorbing commitment with me.
Of course, The Joker and his ‘womb-bomb’, is up against science. We’re in 2022, so it’s often suggested that we should just freeze the buggers (eggs, not men). And it sounds so simple, like placing a bag of peas in the kitchen freezer. We’re fortunate to be given this option today, but it does cost money. You pay to have them scooped out for the storage and have them put back in again – this costs around £8,000. That’s a costly bag of peas…
….the ticking continues.
I feel sorry for men. I do. We expect them to understand our womb-bomb dilemma, but they can’t even find their socks in the morning.
And so the scene unfolds; man and woman watching Stranger Things 4 on the sofa.
WOMAN: Here’s a fun question, where do you see yourself in two years?
(Man pretends to watch the screen as he searches his brain for the right answer)
MAN: Erm, dunno, babe.
(Woman crosses arms and goes silent for five minutes…………..)
MAN: You alright babe?
WOMAN: Well it’s alright for you isn’t it?
MAN: What?
WOMAN: YOU DON’T HAVE A WOMB BOMB!
(Man looks confused and sad. He thought it was going to be a night of Netflix and Chill, but she hasn’t chilled since blowing out those 30 candles on Colin the Caterpillar).
THE QUACK 