The secret of success with women

Big guy everybody loves at Christmas. And Santa.

Brian is a bit of a babe magnet. He denies it modestly, but the evidence is there for all to see. Beautiful blonde wife he's devoted to. Women gazing adoringly, when he goes out. 

If I've heard "Brian is lovely" once, I've heard it a dozen times.

So this evening I've decided to get the secret out of him, as the two of us are having a whisky together in his lounge, while the females of the family are off somewhere, buying Christmas presents.

"Is this a Glenlivet?" I say, sipping the mellow malt.

"Singleton," he tells me.

"Close," I say. "The distilleries are only ten miles apart. Same water and air. Same smooth, sweet, fruity Speyside."

He noses his glass. "True," he says. "But I think you'll find the fruit notes in The Singleton are blackcurrant with a hint of espresso coffee, while The Glenlivet is powerfully pineapple."

I take a sip and survey the guy over the rim of my glass. He is probably right. He always is. It's what makes you want to slap him round the head. I don't because I'm too civilised for violence. 

And because he's six feet three.

A man of studied calm, eclectic interests and impressive erudition, Brian read philosophy at Cambridge and has about 5000 books around his house. He is an admirer of the empiricist philosopher and urbane 18th century gent, David Hume.

"He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper," Hume wrote. "But he is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance."

Which pretty much sums up young Brian. Nothing seems to faze him. I don't believe he has ever lost his temper. I've never seen him show irritation even, which is some feat in a modern world that starts irritating me as soon as I notice it's still there in the morning.

"So listen laddie, what is the secret of your appeal to females?" I say. "And none of your false modesty."

He considers the question, his head tilted to one side, studying the light shimmering through his whisky. "Maybe it's because I don't try to impress," he says quietly. "I just chat to them."

"What about?" I say.

"Anything." He shrugs. "Everything. Books, films, music, history, philosophy, sport. It's not rocket science."

"I know that," I say. "I can do rocket science."

"You have to remember that women are people," he says, and I place my whisky down on the coffee table and study him closely, trying to figure out if he's pulling my leg. 

"You mean they are like people?" I say.

"No," he says. "They are people." 

"Surely men are from Mars and women from Venus," I say. "Everybody knows that."

"We are all from Earth," he says, sounding like one of those long-haired, airy-fairy, love and peace, get a job in banking as soon as I graduate hippies that were around when I was a lad.

"Let's say you're right," I say. "Does that mean I should just be myself around women? Then they'll like me too?"

“'Be yourself; everyone else is already taken,'” Brian says. 

"I've always liked that quote," I say. "Ralph Waldo Emerson wasn't it?"

"Oscar Wilde," he says. "What Emerson said was: 'To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.'”

"Really?" I say. "Thank you for correcting me. Anyway the point is it's all about being yourself. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"

He scratches his chin. "It's not that simple, I'm afraid," he says. "'Be yourself' works for me. But that's because it's me. It's not going to work as well for you, because you'll end up with you. Same idea, different outcome. 

"You see what I mean, don't you?"

"Yes I do," I say, gritting my teeth, reminding myself that Brian only looks average size because he's seated, taking a swig of his Singleton and detecting for the first time those bloody notes of blackcurrant he was on about.

Brain drain

Wouldn't it be nice if brains came with a detailed set of instructions? Been using mine for longer than I care to mention, but I still have no idea what it's doing, most of the time.

I mean you buy anything these day, from a motor-car to a packet of cereal, and it comes with a manual in 40 languages. "Verser les corn flakes dans l'assiette, et puis le lait sur ​​les corn flakes."

But the most complicated machine in the world arrives in a box you can't open, without even a basic set of operating rules - like don't try scratching it with a knitting-needle through your ear.

So occasionally I get mine working like a well-oiled machine, but often it's more like the rusty old bangers you find in farmyards. And that's strange because if my pals were struggling at school I'd often pretend I hadn't got it either. Made them feel better and got on the teachers' tits at the same time, which was always a bonus.

Nowadays I do the opposite, using nods and smiles, as people speak, to conceal the fact that they could be talking Swahili, for all the sense it makes to me. In an earlier post I mentioned that my son and sister's chat often goes over my head. But I have to admit it's not just theirs.

Instead of ageing gracefully into the wise, fatherly figure I've been aiming for all these years, I seem to have matured into a moron, although I think that's one of the words you can't use now, because it's offensive.

It's a word, incidentally that comes from the Greek moros, which meant dull. Sharp was oxys, which is where oxymoron - sharp-dull, a contradiction in terms - comes from.

See, I know stuff. I just don't understand anything, anymore.

So when Diane sends an email that stretches to several pages and makes only sporadic sense to me, I panic at first, then phone a friend, a trusty translator, fluent in both Diane and Douglas.

"Explain it to me, Rachel," I beg, phone in one hand, small Highland Park in the other.

"Which part don't you get?" she asks.

"See where it says 'Hi'." I say.

"Yes," she says.

"I get that," I tell her. "Then the next sentence goes on for three lines and my brain goes blooey."

So she talks me patiently through the email, explaining the acronyms, reminding me of stuff I'm supposed to know, but have misplaced somewhere in the crinkles of my cortex, and after an hour a little light shines in the darkness.

"She wants my ideas for a proposal on engaging with science researchers?" I say.

"Yes," Rachel says.

"Why didn't she say so?"

"She did."

"Not to me she didn't," I say and a stray thought strikes. Maybe my brain isn't the problem. Maybe it's everyone else's.

"Let me run something past you," I say, sipping the sweet, slightly-peated malt.

"Will it take long?" Rachel asks. "I have dinner to cook in six hours."

"I'll give you the condensed version," I say. "Chat forums, blogs and emails have taught people to do a brain dump when they want to communicate. Quantity is what counts online. So where a newspaper article is tightly edited, anything online is a baggy, bloated bunch of bollocks.

"That means editing has been transferred from the writer's brain to the reader's, and mine just can't be arsed. What do you think?"

There's a pause before she speaks. "It sounds to me like another version of the two billion people are wrong and Douglas is right theory," she says, gently. "And what are the chances of that being true?"

"Roughly two billion to one against," I say, swallowing the last of the whisky. "But that's not zero, is it?"

As dragons play

"You can't beat a nice cup of tea," Rachel tells me in Tchai-Ovna, the house of tea, overlooking the River Kelvin. 

"Yes you can," I say. "Tea's too dry. So is wine. I like my drinks wet, cool and thirst-quenching."

"So that would be beer," she says.

"Correct," I say.

"Tea is thirst-quenching," she insists, lifting the blue china bowl of oolong in both hands and sipping daintily."It's why it's the most popular drink in the world, apart from water."

"I've heard that," I say. "It's baffling."

"Two billion people drink tea every morning ," she says. "Two billion people are wrong and you're right?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," I say, taking a sip of my Dragon's Eye, the tea she's chosen for me. "How can liquid be dry?" 

"I know this," she says. "Give me a minute."

So I pick up the chunky menu and browse, while she dredges her memory. Dozens of teas are listed, each with its own story. Dragon's Eye, would you believe, is "a good quality tea to calm the nerves and sharpen the senses, while relaxing under an ancient, gnarled tea tree, as dragons play in the air with plumes of fire."

"Got it," Rachel says, bringing me back to earth with a bump - I always fancied myself as a dragonrider. "It's the tannins in the tea," she says. "They combine with stuff in your saliva to give that dry feel on your tongue."

"You learn something new every day," I say.

"Especially if you don't know much," she says, smiling to soften the sting. "Tannins combine with milk, if you put it in your tea, which leaves less to make your mouth dry."

"Fascinating," I say, slightly disengaged, since part of me is still up there, playing with plumes of fire.

"Am I boring you?" she asks.

"No, no," I tell her, and try to think of an intelligent question. "Would it be tannins that make wine dry too?"

"Yes and no," she says.

"See I've always thought that's a stupid answer," I say, forgetting to smile. "It must be either yes or no. Can't be both."

"That's because you crave certainty," she says. "You don't like fuzzy grey areas."

"Not true," I say. "I pretty much am a fuzzy grey area." 

"You are," she says. "But you need to open yourself more to uncertainty. Embrace ambiguity. It makes life interesting."

"I'll try," I promise. "Why yes and no about dry wine?"

"Yes, wine has tannins, especially red wine. No, that's not what they mean by dry wine."

My attention span is starting to struggle. But the dragon's eye has calmed my nerves and sharpened my senses. "Go on," I say.

"Dry in wine just means not sweet," she says. "All the sugar from the grapes has turned to alcohol. So you can have dry wine with any amount of tannins, or none - or sweet wine, come to that."

"Why are they there?" I ask, since she's clearly enjoying pulling this stuff out of her head.

"They come from the grapes," she says. "Lots of plants use them in their leaves and unripe fruit to stop getting eaten."

"But fruit wants to get eaten," I say. "It's how seeds spread."

"So the tannins get less astringent - softer - as the grape ripens," she says. "Also during winemaking, which changes them in lots of complicated ways."

"Well, well," I say.

"Lesson over,"  she says. "You know what I like most about tea? 

"That it lets you air your vast knowledge in public places," I say.

"Of course," she says. "But mostly that it's a thread of culture connecting me to a long line of tea-drinkers, right back through history. It's a civilised activity that brings people together in an oasis of calm, no matter how hard life is for them."

I stare at her over the china. "And I thought it was just brown stuff that feels like socks in your mouth."

"Would you like another pot of tea?" she asks.

"Yes," I tell her. "And no."