Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

Have you ever read this? It should have a subtitle ‘… and the authors live on another planet.’

It’s very badly written for starters. Real Janet and John and Fluff and Nip style. I think the editor must have been on long term sick leave.

As for the content. Well, if you haven’t read it I’ll give you a precis, and then you won’t need to bother. If you have read it, then this should ring some bells.

If you’re a woman

You are not really someone struggling to get a buggy onto an overcrowded bus.  You are really a woman called Moonchild, or Sun on the Lake.

You’ve been pregnant pretty much since you hit puberty, and since your husband, who is called Ug, hit you with a club and dragged you back to his cave.

When you aren’t breastfeeding your children, you sit around weaving baskets and decorating them with pretty pebbles, shells you’ve found, or plumage from exotic birds. Or perhaps you go foraging for nuts, berries, and edible tubers. You’re also on the rota for tending the village wise woman, who is very sick, but still has the strength to teach you folksongs about the family and the tribe. You may even be in line to succeed her when she finally dies.

Sometimes when it’s quiet you marvel at the sound of birdcalls, and wonder how Ug’s hunting trip is going.

If you’re a man

You aren’t really a city banker, you’re a great hunter and warrior, called Ug.

When you hear birdsong, you don’t have time to marvel at it, youre too busy deciding if the songster is edible.

You have permanently grazed knuckles. You have a small braincase, so you don’t have room for emotions, only animal cunning. You have a four word vocabulary – Sex, food, sex, and sex. When you can’t express yourself, you grunt.

You can get a bit tetchy if you’ve had to fight off a sabre toothed tiger that morning, and all Moonchild can do is tell you the children need new moccasins. You get very tetchy when you come back empty handed from hunting. Moonchild will go off on one, not realising that the mastodon that escaped not only nearly trampled you to death, but ran off with your last remaining pointy stick hanging out of its arse.

When you get tired of Moonchild’s whingeing and unaccountable refusal to have sex, you slap her about a bit, then head up the sweatlodge for twelve hours of male bonding and a shedload of hallucinogenic mushrooms. When you finally emerge, you’re ready for sex with anything, including the wife of your mate Grarg, or even with the village wise woman, who may be old and with one tooth, but the ugly ones are really grateful, you know.

If you’re a cod psychologist who can write very well

You’re quids in, aren’t you. Money in the bank.